Except that the All Writs Act doesn't grant the power to issue other rulings as warrants. It just allows judges to issue rulings generally that are otherwise legal, without requiring a new law to be passed to allow for each specific ruling a judge might have to make. This is normally used at the end of a civil case for a judge to order some sort of resolution, restitution, or punishment.
It is not otherwise legal for search warrant to compel the creation of new speech, and make no mistake: software is legally speech. A search warrant is for the collection of existing evidence, not for the creation of new speech, or even the creation of new physical objects except where they are copies of information that is evidence.
There is no reason to think that the All Writs Act would have to be thrown out for the courts to smack this over-reach down. And that is most obvious result, because US courts do not appreciate the government asking them to compel speech.
I see, now you want to force them to lease property, too. Nobody who disagrees with compelling their speech is going to think it is a reasonable solution to also compel them to enter into a property contract in order to mitigate the damage done to them by compelling speech.
Also, court orders can't preclude theft. There is no magic dust that stops a thief because a court recognized that theft would be really-super-bad for society in this case. Rather, that a potential theft would have such dire consequences is part of the legal analysis of the potential harm to Apple. That analysis wasn't done by the magistrate judge, who doesn't even have the training or experience to do that part of the analysis. That will be done at the appeals court level.
You accuse me of "misinformation," I'm throwing down the gauntlet on that! You're a liar to accuse me of that. If you disagree, disagree, don't make a false accusation.
You accuse me of "misinformation," and then you verify my statement! As you said, "firmware is just a piece of software." Right. Is a piece of software tied to one computer, or can it also be run on other computers? Is that indeed part of the nature of software?
You're saying that you believe that adding an ID check to the software source code somehow locks it so that it can only be used with one device. I'm a software developer, and I say you're full of shit and don't even realize that software can be easily altered later to work with a different ID. There is no way to "lock" it so that can't happen. Even if it is a compiled binary file, it is easy to find and replace the ID because they already know the ID of the phone it would be written for.
Don't claim I'm "spreading misinformation" when you don't even understand the details. Yes, I am saying it is "technically impossible" for Apple to write firmware that is locked to one device, because of the very nature of what software is. The only way that a piece of software can be locked to one device is if that device has a custom CPU and there are no other devices that can run the code. But iPhones don't come with individually customized processors, all the phones of the same model have the same processor and can indeed run each other's firmware.
It isn't even a "custom IOS version" so your tale of the circumstances is impossible. Details matter, especially when you're trying to argue that something won't be released more broadly.
They'll all be in the room, sure. Whose equipment is being used? Do you know the answer to that? Does it affect the conclusion?
The problem with your analysis is that the words "flexible" and "fixed" don't have technical meaning here. Those aren't differing physical characteristics to choose between, those are just human-level descriptions of how the programming will be organized.
An FPGA intentionally has a whole bunch of extra circuits supporting each logical unit, those are expected to take a lot of extra power because it is additional functionality. An FPGA doesn't use more power per physical transistor, it just has a whole bunch of transistors and other logic devices for each programmable unit. When you then implement the circuit as an ASIC, it uses less power because it uses less logic devices, not because there is some other qualitative difference.
Something like this, any extra logic devices would be specifically designed to manage the other logic devices for low power use. That is a very reasonable thing to try to do. If their implementation is successful and useful in the market is a whole different issue, of course.
Transmeta was successful from an engineering perspective; their products used less power than their competitors. Problem was, they were only a few months ahead, and required too many changes in devices. All other companies had to do was be richer, and more able to secure access to new fab technologies.
One big difference here is that this will potentially change thread management for programmers in a way that many people will like. It might very well be able to fragment the industry and corner a significant chunk of interest.
No, if Apple refuses then it goes to the appeals courts, and the higher up they fight it the more likely Apple will win, because the FBI is asking to compel speech and the US Courts really don't like that. This ruling was by a "magistrate" judge who is a paperwork pusher who doesn't actually even oversee trials. This is just a typical outlier ruling that a large country sees. There are lots of even worse rulings being overturned every day. They higher up you go, the less deference there is to the other branches of government, and the more judges worry about judicial independence, and defending existing precedents such as not allowing compelled speech.
If you understand evidence handling, you understand that the FBI will indeed receive the tool. They're not going to loan the phone to Apple and have Apple bring back the data.;)
And it is an interesting thing about electronic tools, especially one that is purely software; you can't just receive your copy back and know that they didn't keep a copy. It just doesn't work that way. If you turn a digital file over to somebody, now they have it. They might indeed keep a backup. They might even accidentally make a backup because of how their workstation is set up by their IT guys.
I hate Apple products as much today as yesterday. Hating proprietary gardens and refusing to use them has absolutely nothing to do with this case.
I'm glad it doesn't interfere with my ability to defend Apple's right to choose their own speech, to only write and release software that they choose to release. Doesn't mean I'd use it.
Microsoft used to be evil because they had power. Then over time their power went away. They may or may not still have evil intent; we won't know because they don't have power over anybody anymore, thanks to the DoJ smacking them down for whacking Netscrape and Wordperfect. Who did they whack lately? Oh right, nobody. They wanted to see Nokia's last breath, they had to just pay for the right by buying them out. Most of us run *nix, and if MS is playing by the rules hating them has no purpose or effect. I build my own systems, and I don't have to pay any "Microsoft tax" to do it. Kids these days don't even know what the war was about, or how/why it ended.
Firmware isn't "tied to a specific phone" that is just imaginary thinking that the prosecutor inserted into the request to make it sound better.
Apple firmware is not customized per-user, it is not made-to-order, a firmware file signed with Apple's key can be run on any phone with the right version numbers.
The attempt to argue it that generally fails, because there is precedent for purely commercial action; for example, during WWII farmers were required to grow certain crops, or else turn their farmland over to somebody willing to grow it. It may also be true that there are additional elements of the thing called "slavery" than just being compelled to do a thing you didn't want to do. If somebody is kidnapped, and rescued an hour later, and during that hour they were forced to take money out of an ATM, is it fair to claim they they are now slaves, they are now property? Or are they merely a crime victim, and not actually slaves? Is a person who is sentenced to a work camp for a month now a slave?
It is more useful here to note that the compelled action would be the creation of a copyrighted product, and that means they are attempting to compel new speech that matches their goals, even though they admit the proposed speaker doesn't want to say those things. For that, the precedent goes very much in a different direction than the over-broad analysis. Further, the new product would actually harm their existing product, and the FBI admits that there would be harm accidentally by claiming that Apple's position is "PR" to try to get customers. Darn straight they want their speech to speech that gets them customers, and they may indeed have that right.
This is an inanity by a "magistrate" judge, somebody who job is supposed to be to rule over the routine paperwork stuff because there are too many cases for the real judges that preside over trails to stamp everything. There is no actual chance of this standing, because the appeals courts only contain real judges, and the higher things get, the more serious the analysis given is. The US legal system is constantly correcting these absurdities from the trenches, it is just part of the process of having an independent judiciary.
Having static everything would certainly prevent a virus making use of libraries from infecting every process, but that isn't necessary or even desirable to them. Having more different available versions to attack would increase the likelihood of infection. But more to the point with these exploits is attacks generally, not the special case of viruses. If somebody is attacking a system, they're going to attack all of the available surface until they get in, and then stop. Having all those different library surfaces makes it more difficult to predict which attack will succeed, but it makes it more likely that one of them will.
Any immune response that you build is going to either be very limited in functionality, or else an additional attack vector. If you want a bunch of small processes running, each of which might kill another process because it thinks it is misbehaving, you might eventually build a system that responds in a similar way to attack; but it would also have things like allergic reactions, where false positives destroy existing functionality and data. You would have to completely give up repeatability and the ability to predict behaviors; even ones you're programming. And testing would never guarantee continued functioning, even without code changes.
Not every paradigm from nature is going to be applicable to human computing tools.
I simply assumed the glasses were shit, and stopped using that type of glass after they all broke. It's the same principle behind never using perl.
Didn't read past that. That wouldn't get you to six, it would get you to one or two and then you'd throw away the rest. There would be no reason to wash the remaining one using the same technique that was proven flawed for that unit; deciding the units were all crap would underscore that, not eliminate it.
BTW, welcome to slashdot. No, we don't click video links. This is a place for stuff that matters, not stuff too vapid to write down.
Of course I restrict my consumption of information. There is an available information glut, and most of it is noisy.
Notice that that doesn't restrict my access in any way.
You are very sloppy in your words, and your thinking. Pejoratives cause you to be ignored. You enjoy it, so I hope you also take full credit for your results.
I find it funny you think I would click an external link; even funnier that the domain name is some TV-thing. ROFLCOPTER
Also, if you're snooty and ready to tell people they don't understand "the creative process," presumably it means you're a hipster. It certainly doesn't imply creativity. Nor does finding amusement in a thing automatically guarantee that it is appropriate or constructive in a technical discussion.
Sorry wannabe bully, you're not going to chase nerds off slashdot by just signing up late and then telling us what to talk about.
If you can't figure out what story you're commenting on, that is not my problem; why would it lead me to change my subject?
You're off-topic, and complaining because my insights have a different focus than whatever you were saying. Get over it. I'm talking about the subject in the story, the same as almost everybody here. If you're talking about something else, that is on you. Don't try to blame it on me, and if you think telling me what to say has any chance to be effective, well. That is also on you.
And then if you move, you get to repeat the choice; rent a box, or buy another box for $299 because the one you bought for the last service didn't give kickbacks to the new service company, or did but they were in a different state, and so they won't add the product ID to the whitelist. That they use the same protocols and are totally compatible is irrelevant.
You seem to have been exposed to the system, but you didn't really understand the choices you were presented. Instead, you understood the parts the cable company explained to you, in the way they explained it.
They will have to wait in line, because it is Republicans at the FCC who opposed, and so it is mostly only Fox News that will have a queue for speaking against it, because it is the natural bottleneck.
All the other channels will only have one R and one D on the screen at a time, and the R's hate the FCC. D's in the trenches are used to the FCC being against freedom, and won't quickly jump to support them after just one or two good decisions. So it is mostly going to be one-way traffic; a line of R's queuing for limited slots to hate on the change, and a small number of D's who are regular contributors to whatever show it is defending it.
Cue the queue, the FCC sneezed and Obama is President so it is the end of America!!!
I know right away that both my Senators support real competition and support this change.
Maybe you should just elect better Senators?
I'll bet there are a number of States where it is obvious both Senators will support this change. They might even have other things in common, maybe even the same colored lapel pins. Maybe even the same color lapel pins as the FCC members who voted for this change!
Granted, if your State's Senators have same-colored lapel pins as the FCC guys who voted against this change, then it is safe to say they will oppose it.
No, they'll just jack up the prices for your internet service to make up for what you're not paying them for cable.
Only if the current price is based strictly on competition. If instead there is very little local competition between companies offering equivalent services to the same addresses, then the price is based on "what the market will bear" and not on cost. In that case, the price that the market can bear would not change, and they wouldn't be able to raise prices without losing customers.
"Cable ready" means that it can control more channels than OTA VHS and UHF band regular channels. That is all it means; it can control the already-decoded channels. In those days, you could connect a regular "non-cable-ready" TV to the cable, through the antenna input, and view the low-numbered cable channels. It was common in the 80s for families to have 1 cable box, and maybe a second TV (the old one, probably B&W) in another room that got the low channels, which usually included news and the local channels.
That capability went away whenever your local cable switched to a digital broadcast. Here, that was in the 90s.
The "cable company" was "confused" because they weren't the "cable company," they were just the guys at the local cable office, who are only trained in what the services the company offers. They are not trained in related technical issues, and of course they are surprised by new products. Also, the "engineer" they sent out was probably what in the US we would call a "technician." The local cable office would be unlikely to even have an engineer to send out, even if it says "cable engineer" or "engineering technician" on his name tag. The reason they sent him out would be that they didn't have confidence that they could get a straight answer out of the actual cable company. They would probably just receive training in how to BS the customer into thinking they still need a box, without actually having anything explained.
There is no such thing as an "internet ready" TV. Those are being called "smart TVs." If a company is using "internet ready" on the box advertising, it isn't surprising, but that isn't really a good way to try to discuss the product with people. A hint: being "internet ready" would not provide youtube capability any more than I can watch youtube on a network switch.
... I've had glass mugs explode in my hand while hand-washing: when pulled out from under the faucet, the cool air caused the glass to contract and crack, sometimes loudly, sometimes energetically. I lost *six* mugs in a set that way...
Wow, that exposes your debugging skills pretty bad. One, OK. Everybody makes mistakes, one bug is not even a foul. Two, well, your first theory was just that it was a flawed unit. Three, OK, your first mitigation technique didn't work. Six? And then you're going to go on from there to lecture on code quality? You focus a lot on temperatures, I can inform you right now that your hot water heater is not adjusted to specification, and you failed to expect to need to adjust your washing technique to mitigate that.
Programming is hard, and if you disagree, you probably have three to six times more bugs than you would have had if you realized that it is hard.;)
BTW, the nuclear containment building is not a viable metaphor for the type of code mitigation strategies you describe. And python code does not have less bugs, that is an inanity with a known value.
You're a bit dull to be name-calling based on your presumed intellectual superiority.
It took about half a second for me to notice that an attack vector would be Apple, because they're the ones with the private keys needed to install modified firmware. And, presumably there are live humans at Apple that are potentially susceptible to social engineering attacks.
Unlikely his people are that good, but there is an available (very difficult) solution that matches his claim.
Your inability to think even all the way to the edge of the standard box makes it unlikely you can offer deeper security insights than McAfee. Crazy has always been why he is entertaining, but it was never any sort of counter-point to his genius.
Dropping names to brag about disagreeing with famous people does not cause me to presume that there will be technical insights that I should read the details to find. Rather, it tells me that you're biased and have a bone to pick, and were not able to successfully remove the bias to create a technical discussion of the issues. So your attempt to argue finer points won't even be examined. There is too much available noise for that to be reasonable. I have to be convinced that a signal has low noise before even bothering to worry about what the content may (or may not) actually be. Such is the situation that information glut blesses me with.
Political battles about code are crap. If you're more willing to thrash code than [some random famous guy], your code will introduce more bugs than his. And if he's famous for having stable code that often lacks bugs that the upstream had, because it gets cleaned up once and then left alone, then you'll have a really hard time convincing people to both care about code politics, and also take a revolutionary stance.
You might be right about the details you claim. I'm not going to analyze them. But if they're all correct, I'd be on the other guy's side. Code thrash is the source of most security bugs. Notice that glibc has been around for decades, but this bug was only introduced in `08.
And if you misspell his name to create a pejorative pun, then I know you're just some asshat. What did he really do, steal your Caribou board?
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Except that the All Writs Act doesn't grant the power to issue other rulings as warrants. It just allows judges to issue rulings generally that are otherwise legal, without requiring a new law to be passed to allow for each specific ruling a judge might have to make. This is normally used at the end of a civil case for a judge to order some sort of resolution, restitution, or punishment.
It is not otherwise legal for search warrant to compel the creation of new speech, and make no mistake: software is legally speech. A search warrant is for the collection of existing evidence, not for the creation of new speech, or even the creation of new physical objects except where they are copies of information that is evidence.
There is no reason to think that the All Writs Act would have to be thrown out for the courts to smack this over-reach down. And that is most obvious result, because US courts do not appreciate the government asking them to compel speech.
In the old days anybody who ran linux knew that updates were the source of new bugs. They also damage uptime.
Seriously now, who here is stupid enough to run an update only because it is new, or because they're asked to update frequently?
I see, now you want to force them to lease property, too. Nobody who disagrees with compelling their speech is going to think it is a reasonable solution to also compel them to enter into a property contract in order to mitigate the damage done to them by compelling speech.
Also, court orders can't preclude theft. There is no magic dust that stops a thief because a court recognized that theft would be really-super-bad for society in this case. Rather, that a potential theft would have such dire consequences is part of the legal analysis of the potential harm to Apple. That analysis wasn't done by the magistrate judge, who doesn't even have the training or experience to do that part of the analysis. That will be done at the appeals court level.
You accuse me of "misinformation," I'm throwing down the gauntlet on that! You're a liar to accuse me of that. If you disagree, disagree, don't make a false accusation.
You accuse me of "misinformation," and then you verify my statement! As you said, "firmware is just a piece of software." Right. Is a piece of software tied to one computer, or can it also be run on other computers? Is that indeed part of the nature of software?
You're saying that you believe that adding an ID check to the software source code somehow locks it so that it can only be used with one device. I'm a software developer, and I say you're full of shit and don't even realize that software can be easily altered later to work with a different ID. There is no way to "lock" it so that can't happen. Even if it is a compiled binary file, it is easy to find and replace the ID because they already know the ID of the phone it would be written for.
Don't claim I'm "spreading misinformation" when you don't even understand the details. Yes, I am saying it is "technically impossible" for Apple to write firmware that is locked to one device, because of the very nature of what software is. The only way that a piece of software can be locked to one device is if that device has a custom CPU and there are no other devices that can run the code. But iPhones don't come with individually customized processors, all the phones of the same model have the same processor and can indeed run each other's firmware.
It isn't even a "custom IOS version" so your tale of the circumstances is impossible. Details matter, especially when you're trying to argue that something won't be released more broadly.
They'll all be in the room, sure. Whose equipment is being used? Do you know the answer to that? Does it affect the conclusion?
The problem with your analysis is that the words "flexible" and "fixed" don't have technical meaning here. Those aren't differing physical characteristics to choose between, those are just human-level descriptions of how the programming will be organized.
An FPGA intentionally has a whole bunch of extra circuits supporting each logical unit, those are expected to take a lot of extra power because it is additional functionality. An FPGA doesn't use more power per physical transistor, it just has a whole bunch of transistors and other logic devices for each programmable unit. When you then implement the circuit as an ASIC, it uses less power because it uses less logic devices, not because there is some other qualitative difference.
Something like this, any extra logic devices would be specifically designed to manage the other logic devices for low power use. That is a very reasonable thing to try to do. If their implementation is successful and useful in the market is a whole different issue, of course.
Transmeta was successful from an engineering perspective; their products used less power than their competitors. Problem was, they were only a few months ahead, and required too many changes in devices. All other companies had to do was be richer, and more able to secure access to new fab technologies.
One big difference here is that this will potentially change thread management for programmers in a way that many people will like. It might very well be able to fragment the industry and corner a significant chunk of interest.
No, if Apple refuses then it goes to the appeals courts, and the higher up they fight it the more likely Apple will win, because the FBI is asking to compel speech and the US Courts really don't like that. This ruling was by a "magistrate" judge who is a paperwork pusher who doesn't actually even oversee trials. This is just a typical outlier ruling that a large country sees. There are lots of even worse rulings being overturned every day. They higher up you go, the less deference there is to the other branches of government, and the more judges worry about judicial independence, and defending existing precedents such as not allowing compelled speech.
If you understand evidence handling, you understand that the FBI will indeed receive the tool. They're not going to loan the phone to Apple and have Apple bring back the data. ;)
And it is an interesting thing about electronic tools, especially one that is purely software; you can't just receive your copy back and know that they didn't keep a copy. It just doesn't work that way. If you turn a digital file over to somebody, now they have it. They might indeed keep a backup. They might even accidentally make a backup because of how their workstation is set up by their IT guys.
I hate Apple products as much today as yesterday. Hating proprietary gardens and refusing to use them has absolutely nothing to do with this case.
I'm glad it doesn't interfere with my ability to defend Apple's right to choose their own speech, to only write and release software that they choose to release. Doesn't mean I'd use it.
Microsoft used to be evil because they had power. Then over time their power went away. They may or may not still have evil intent; we won't know because they don't have power over anybody anymore, thanks to the DoJ smacking them down for whacking Netscrape and Wordperfect. Who did they whack lately? Oh right, nobody. They wanted to see Nokia's last breath, they had to just pay for the right by buying them out. Most of us run *nix, and if MS is playing by the rules hating them has no purpose or effect. I build my own systems, and I don't have to pay any "Microsoft tax" to do it. Kids these days don't even know what the war was about, or how/why it ended.
Firmware isn't "tied to a specific phone" that is just imaginary thinking that the prosecutor inserted into the request to make it sound better.
Apple firmware is not customized per-user, it is not made-to-order, a firmware file signed with Apple's key can be run on any phone with the right version numbers.
The attempt to argue it that generally fails, because there is precedent for purely commercial action; for example, during WWII farmers were required to grow certain crops, or else turn their farmland over to somebody willing to grow it. It may also be true that there are additional elements of the thing called "slavery" than just being compelled to do a thing you didn't want to do. If somebody is kidnapped, and rescued an hour later, and during that hour they were forced to take money out of an ATM, is it fair to claim they they are now slaves, they are now property? Or are they merely a crime victim, and not actually slaves? Is a person who is sentenced to a work camp for a month now a slave?
It is more useful here to note that the compelled action would be the creation of a copyrighted product, and that means they are attempting to compel new speech that matches their goals, even though they admit the proposed speaker doesn't want to say those things. For that, the precedent goes very much in a different direction than the over-broad analysis. Further, the new product would actually harm their existing product, and the FBI admits that there would be harm accidentally by claiming that Apple's position is "PR" to try to get customers. Darn straight they want their speech to speech that gets them customers, and they may indeed have that right.
This is an inanity by a "magistrate" judge, somebody who job is supposed to be to rule over the routine paperwork stuff because there are too many cases for the real judges that preside over trails to stamp everything. There is no actual chance of this standing, because the appeals courts only contain real judges, and the higher things get, the more serious the analysis given is. The US legal system is constantly correcting these absurdities from the trenches, it is just part of the process of having an independent judiciary.
Having static everything would certainly prevent a virus making use of libraries from infecting every process, but that isn't necessary or even desirable to them. Having more different available versions to attack would increase the likelihood of infection. But more to the point with these exploits is attacks generally, not the special case of viruses. If somebody is attacking a system, they're going to attack all of the available surface until they get in, and then stop. Having all those different library surfaces makes it more difficult to predict which attack will succeed, but it makes it more likely that one of them will.
Any immune response that you build is going to either be very limited in functionality, or else an additional attack vector. If you want a bunch of small processes running, each of which might kill another process because it thinks it is misbehaving, you might eventually build a system that responds in a similar way to attack; but it would also have things like allergic reactions, where false positives destroy existing functionality and data. You would have to completely give up repeatability and the ability to predict behaviors; even ones you're programming. And testing would never guarantee continued functioning, even without code changes.
Not every paradigm from nature is going to be applicable to human computing tools.
I simply assumed the glasses were shit, and stopped using that type of glass after they all broke. It's the same principle behind never using perl.
Didn't read past that. That wouldn't get you to six, it would get you to one or two and then you'd throw away the rest. There would be no reason to wash the remaining one using the same technique that was proven flawed for that unit; deciding the units were all crap would underscore that, not eliminate it.
BTW, welcome to slashdot. No, we don't click video links. This is a place for stuff that matters, not stuff too vapid to write down.
Of course I restrict my consumption of information. There is an available information glut, and most of it is noisy.
Notice that that doesn't restrict my access in any way.
You are very sloppy in your words, and your thinking. Pejoratives cause you to be ignored. You enjoy it, so I hope you also take full credit for your results.
I find it funny you think I would click an external link; even funnier that the domain name is some TV-thing. ROFLCOPTER
Also, if you're snooty and ready to tell people they don't understand "the creative process," presumably it means you're a hipster. It certainly doesn't imply creativity. Nor does finding amusement in a thing automatically guarantee that it is appropriate or constructive in a technical discussion.
Sorry wannabe bully, you're not going to chase nerds off slashdot by just signing up late and then telling us what to talk about.
If you can't figure out what story you're commenting on, that is not my problem; why would it lead me to change my subject?
You're off-topic, and complaining because my insights have a different focus than whatever you were saying. Get over it. I'm talking about the subject in the story, the same as almost everybody here. If you're talking about something else, that is on you. Don't try to blame it on me, and if you think telling me what to say has any chance to be effective, well. That is also on you.
Get off my lawn, kiddo.
You only even claim that it is untrue once. How many times is it true? Completely untrue, or just it has a few exceptions that prove the rule?
And then if you move, you get to repeat the choice; rent a box, or buy another box for $299 because the one you bought for the last service didn't give kickbacks to the new service company, or did but they were in a different state, and so they won't add the product ID to the whitelist. That they use the same protocols and are totally compatible is irrelevant.
You seem to have been exposed to the system, but you didn't really understand the choices you were presented. Instead, you understood the parts the cable company explained to you, in the way they explained it.
They will have to wait in line, because it is Republicans at the FCC who opposed, and so it is mostly only Fox News that will have a queue for speaking against it, because it is the natural bottleneck.
All the other channels will only have one R and one D on the screen at a time, and the R's hate the FCC. D's in the trenches are used to the FCC being against freedom, and won't quickly jump to support them after just one or two good decisions. So it is mostly going to be one-way traffic; a line of R's queuing for limited slots to hate on the change, and a small number of D's who are regular contributors to whatever show it is defending it.
Cue the queue, the FCC sneezed and Obama is President so it is the end of America!!!
I know right away that both my Senators support real competition and support this change.
Maybe you should just elect better Senators?
I'll bet there are a number of States where it is obvious both Senators will support this change. They might even have other things in common, maybe even the same colored lapel pins. Maybe even the same color lapel pins as the FCC members who voted for this change!
Granted, if your State's Senators have same-colored lapel pins as the FCC guys who voted against this change, then it is safe to say they will oppose it.
Cable industry days are numbered.
No, they'll just jack up the prices for your internet service to make up for what you're not paying them for cable.
Only if the current price is based strictly on competition. If instead there is very little local competition between companies offering equivalent services to the same addresses, then the price is based on "what the market will bear" and not on cost. In that case, the price that the market can bear would not change, and they wouldn't be able to raise prices without losing customers.
"Cable ready" means that it can control more channels than OTA VHS and UHF band regular channels. That is all it means; it can control the already-decoded channels. In those days, you could connect a regular "non-cable-ready" TV to the cable, through the antenna input, and view the low-numbered cable channels. It was common in the 80s for families to have 1 cable box, and maybe a second TV (the old one, probably B&W) in another room that got the low channels, which usually included news and the local channels.
That capability went away whenever your local cable switched to a digital broadcast. Here, that was in the 90s.
The "cable company" was "confused" because they weren't the "cable company," they were just the guys at the local cable office, who are only trained in what the services the company offers. They are not trained in related technical issues, and of course they are surprised by new products. Also, the "engineer" they sent out was probably what in the US we would call a "technician." The local cable office would be unlikely to even have an engineer to send out, even if it says "cable engineer" or "engineering technician" on his name tag. The reason they sent him out would be that they didn't have confidence that they could get a straight answer out of the actual cable company. They would probably just receive training in how to BS the customer into thinking they still need a box, without actually having anything explained.
There is no such thing as an "internet ready" TV. Those are being called "smart TVs." If a company is using "internet ready" on the box advertising, it isn't surprising, but that isn't really a good way to try to discuss the product with people. A hint: being "internet ready" would not provide youtube capability any more than I can watch youtube on a network switch.
Wait, you're claiming that cable set-top boxes stopped being used over 3 decades ago? Uhm... no, you're not really that splendid.
Newsflash: this device is still being manufactured today!
Wow, that exposes your debugging skills pretty bad. One, OK. Everybody makes mistakes, one bug is not even a foul. Two, well, your first theory was just that it was a flawed unit. Three, OK, your first mitigation technique didn't work. Six? And then you're going to go on from there to lecture on code quality? You focus a lot on temperatures, I can inform you right now that your hot water heater is not adjusted to specification, and you failed to expect to need to adjust your washing technique to mitigate that.
Programming is hard, and if you disagree, you probably have three to six times more bugs than you would have had if you realized that it is hard. ;)
BTW, the nuclear containment building is not a viable metaphor for the type of code mitigation strategies you describe. And python code does not have less bugs, that is an inanity with a known value.
You're a bit dull to be name-calling based on your presumed intellectual superiority.
It took about half a second for me to notice that an attack vector would be Apple, because they're the ones with the private keys needed to install modified firmware. And, presumably there are live humans at Apple that are potentially susceptible to social engineering attacks.
Unlikely his people are that good, but there is an available (very difficult) solution that matches his claim.
Your inability to think even all the way to the edge of the standard box makes it unlikely you can offer deeper security insights than McAfee. Crazy has always been why he is entertaining, but it was never any sort of counter-point to his genius.
Dropping names to brag about disagreeing with famous people does not cause me to presume that there will be technical insights that I should read the details to find. Rather, it tells me that you're biased and have a bone to pick, and were not able to successfully remove the bias to create a technical discussion of the issues. So your attempt to argue finer points won't even be examined. There is too much available noise for that to be reasonable. I have to be convinced that a signal has low noise before even bothering to worry about what the content may (or may not) actually be. Such is the situation that information glut blesses me with.
Political battles about code are crap. If you're more willing to thrash code than [some random famous guy], your code will introduce more bugs than his. And if he's famous for having stable code that often lacks bugs that the upstream had, because it gets cleaned up once and then left alone, then you'll have a really hard time convincing people to both care about code politics, and also take a revolutionary stance.
You might be right about the details you claim. I'm not going to analyze them. But if they're all correct, I'd be on the other guy's side. Code thrash is the source of most security bugs. Notice that glibc has been around for decades, but this bug was only introduced in `08.
And if you misspell his name to create a pejorative pun, then I know you're just some asshat. What did he really do, steal your Caribou board?