Apple's goal is to make as much money on iOS as possible, everything else is done to further than goal. Apple really wants iOS native applications to be dominant over HTML5, since that makes them more money.
In the end, everyone will lose. Facebook will try to get as much data about iPhone users as possible; Apple will try to prevent Facebook from getting this data, and lock down iOS more and more. At the end of the day, iOS users will wind up with both less privacy and less freedom than ever before.
So instead of having to beat a password out of someone, you just have to steal their dongle?
Yes, assuming the dongle requires no passphrase or other token to decrypt you private key. This moves the security problem to something that people have more experience dealing with: protecting their personal possessions.
The end game may be more sinister. The goal is not to ban software, but to make a legal requirement that people register with the government to use certain kinds of software. This is naturally a good thing for large software companies, who will face less competition from smaller organizations and open source projects. It will also give law enforcement agencies one more way to arrest people who dare to write scripts or use debuggers without the proper paperwork.
In the end, everyone except the general public will win.
But trying to stop Axe murderers by taking them away from all Firemen is just retarded.
Or perhaps just requiring anyone who owns an axe to register with the government? Even further, perhaps only allowing people who work for a particular agency (the fire department) to own an axe? You already see this approach taken with things like guns, and with people refusing to shut about about "cyberwarfare," it is only a matter of time before they start equating programming and debugging tools with firearms.
What makes you think they don't have backgrounds in this? They might be trying to push something more sinister through, like requiring all programmers to register with a government authority. Something like what is described here:
How does one define "hacking tools?" Debuggers are pretty useful for hackers, as are things like netcat/socat, any of dozens of programming languages, and just about anything that lets you work at a low level. This does not even get into the legitimate uses of pen testing tools.
Oh, wait, let me guess: people will have to register with the government to use any of the above?
Frankly, I would think that there is less cracking activity these days than there was 20 years ago. The phone system is a lot more secure, which certainly killed off a lot of hacking. People have access to very powerful computers in their own homes, so there is less incentive to try to gain access to corporate or research computing systems. We have the Internet, which lets us communicate over unspecified distances at a fixed rate (say what you will about the behavior of ISPs, we are still better off than we were when people were dialing into BBSes over long distances).
Sure, there is still plenty of activity, but a lot of would-be crackers are able to put their creative abilities to other uses now, and they probably do. The only incentives crackers have today are lulz and money; those incentives were around 20 years ago, along with plenty of other incentives.
Now, if we use the more correct definition of "hacking," then I suspect that there is little change.
The way to fix the problem of bad passwords is to do away with passwords entirely, and start using cryptographic authentication methods. It may require us to issue a special dongle to users, but at the end of the day people should be able to use their public key to log in to online systems. Naturally, there would be some issues -- users would need to have a way to revoke keys, increase their key sizes to compensate for new algorithms and faster computers, etc., but it would still be an improvement over what we have been doing for the past few decades.
Have I missed something? Why would someone who downloaded their music want to "launder" it? Maybe in world where we are forced to prove that our music was legally obtained, but I have not heard of anyone being put in that situation.
Firstly, we would expect the vast majority of people exchanging bitcoins for dollars not to be criminals
I doubt that this will remain true in the long run. Even if it did remain true, that would mean that law-abiding citizens would be paying their taxes on bitcoin transactions (with dollars) and thus the DEA would simply limit the scope of its surveillance to people making unaccountable exchanges of bitcoins for dollars.
Secondly, of all the criminals that use Bitcoin, we would expect drug sellers to be a (sizable) minority. There would pedos, spammers, hackers/assassins for hire, pimps, etc.
Thus prompting the FBI to watch those who exchange Bitcoins for cash?
It's like investigating ALL customers that walk into a bank for ALL known crimes: you might catch some drug dealers, but it's not a very effective way to do it.
The DEA does investigate people who walk into banks to make large cash deposits...
Yes, because people who use bitcoin suddenly become exempt from paying property tax, tariffs on trade, or taxes on barter (yes, barter is taxable in the USA). Additionally, it is not legal to repay a loan in the US with anything other than dollars, and so no bank will issue a bitcoin loan (as they would not receive any legal protection for such a thing and they could not legally claim your collateral if you went into default). Bitcoin is worth about as much as a Chuck-e-cheese token: the value is limited to a few merchants willing to accept it, and even those merchants are going to want some other currency at the end of the day.
Well, money also has the unique ability to settle a debt with the government, which creates demand for it (couple this with supply, and you get some sense of the value of money). Bitcoin does not have this property, which raises some questions about its value. Bitcoin's recent spike is an indication of a speculative bubble, not that people have lost faith in dollars.
You are forgetting that even drug dealers will need government backed currencies at some point. They will need to buy things from people who will need dollars i.e. because those people are running legal businesses and pay their taxes and need to repay loans (which in the US can only legally be done with USD). All the DEA would need to do is watch who is exchanging bitcoins for USD.
It doesn't matter; if you were writing a system for dealing with these codes, the system should be flexible enough for the codes to change. What if there is some sort of revolutionary medical procedure that requires a new code? What if you want to sell the equipment to a country that has a different set of standards? There are plenty of reasons why someone might need to be able to change the codes.
Which is exactly the point. We may believe that LulzSec is in the right, but at the end of the day they are breaking the law and if caught, they will be prosecuted for it. Chances are that a jury of their peers (at least in this country) will not acquit them, since most Americans buy into the notion that dangerous hackers are out to ruin their lives and their childrens' lives (or something like that).
Slashdot Mirror
Apple's goal is to make as much money on iOS as possible, everything else is done to further than goal. Apple really wants iOS native applications to be dominant over HTML5, since that makes them more money.
In the end, everyone will lose. Facebook will try to get as much data about iPhone users as possible; Apple will try to prevent Facebook from getting this data, and lock down iOS more and more. At the end of the day, iOS users will wind up with both less privacy and less freedom than ever before.
So instead of having to beat a password out of someone, you just have to steal their dongle?
Yes, assuming the dongle requires no passphrase or other token to decrypt you private key. This moves the security problem to something that people have more experience dealing with: protecting their personal possessions.
Guns can also be used for hunting and pest control, which are far more common uses than injuring human beings.
The end game may be more sinister. The goal is not to ban software, but to make a legal requirement that people register with the government to use certain kinds of software. This is naturally a good thing for large software companies, who will face less competition from smaller organizations and open source projects. It will also give law enforcement agencies one more way to arrest people who dare to write scripts or use debuggers without the proper paperwork.
In the end, everyone except the general public will win.
...so in your world, nobody uses a text editor or a compiler to create a botnet?
But trying to stop Axe murderers by taking them away from all Firemen is just retarded.
Or perhaps just requiring anyone who owns an axe to register with the government? Even further, perhaps only allowing people who work for a particular agency (the fire department) to own an axe? You already see this approach taken with things like guns, and with people refusing to shut about about "cyberwarfare," it is only a matter of time before they start equating programming and debugging tools with firearms.
What makes you think they don't have backgrounds in this? They might be trying to push something more sinister through, like requiring all programmers to register with a government authority. Something like what is described here:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
How does one define "hacking tools?" Debuggers are pretty useful for hackers, as are things like netcat/socat, any of dozens of programming languages, and just about anything that lets you work at a low level. This does not even get into the legitimate uses of pen testing tools.
Oh, wait, let me guess: people will have to register with the government to use any of the above?
That was true 20 years ago too. Script kiddies are not exactly a new phenomenon. The term "script kiddie" was developed a long time ago...
Frankly, I would think that there is less cracking activity these days than there was 20 years ago. The phone system is a lot more secure, which certainly killed off a lot of hacking. People have access to very powerful computers in their own homes, so there is less incentive to try to gain access to corporate or research computing systems. We have the Internet, which lets us communicate over unspecified distances at a fixed rate (say what you will about the behavior of ISPs, we are still better off than we were when people were dialing into BBSes over long distances).
Sure, there is still plenty of activity, but a lot of would-be crackers are able to put their creative abilities to other uses now, and they probably do. The only incentives crackers have today are lulz and money; those incentives were around 20 years ago, along with plenty of other incentives.
Now, if we use the more correct definition of "hacking," then I suspect that there is little change.
The way to fix the problem of bad passwords is to do away with passwords entirely, and start using cryptographic authentication methods. It may require us to issue a special dongle to users, but at the end of the day people should be able to use their public key to log in to online systems. Naturally, there would be some issues -- users would need to have a way to revoke keys, increase their key sizes to compensate for new algorithms and faster computers, etc., but it would still be an improvement over what we have been doing for the past few decades.
I guess they have forgotten about the 80s?
Have I missed something? Why would someone who downloaded their music want to "launder" it? Maybe in world where we are forced to prove that our music was legally obtained, but I have not heard of anyone being put in that situation.
Yeah I read it that way at first too, and then I remembered that this is Apple we are talking about.
Firstly, we would expect the vast majority of people exchanging bitcoins for dollars not to be criminals
I doubt that this will remain true in the long run. Even if it did remain true, that would mean that law-abiding citizens would be paying their taxes on bitcoin transactions (with dollars) and thus the DEA would simply limit the scope of its surveillance to people making unaccountable exchanges of bitcoins for dollars.
Secondly, of all the criminals that use Bitcoin, we would expect drug sellers to be a (sizable) minority. There would pedos, spammers, hackers/assassins for hire, pimps, etc.
Thus prompting the FBI to watch those who exchange Bitcoins for cash?
It's like investigating ALL customers that walk into a bank for ALL known crimes: you might catch some drug dealers, but it's not a very effective way to do it.
The DEA does investigate people who walk into banks to make large cash deposits...
Yes, because people who use bitcoin suddenly become exempt from paying property tax, tariffs on trade, or taxes on barter (yes, barter is taxable in the USA). Additionally, it is not legal to repay a loan in the US with anything other than dollars, and so no bank will issue a bitcoin loan (as they would not receive any legal protection for such a thing and they could not legally claim your collateral if you went into default). Bitcoin is worth about as much as a Chuck-e-cheese token: the value is limited to a few merchants willing to accept it, and even those merchants are going to want some other currency at the end of the day.
Well, money also has the unique ability to settle a debt with the government, which creates demand for it (couple this with supply, and you get some sense of the value of money). Bitcoin does not have this property, which raises some questions about its value. Bitcoin's recent spike is an indication of a speculative bubble, not that people have lost faith in dollars.
You are forgetting that even drug dealers will need government backed currencies at some point. They will need to buy things from people who will need dollars i.e. because those people are running legal businesses and pay their taxes and need to repay loans (which in the US can only legally be done with USD). All the DEA would need to do is watch who is exchanging bitcoins for USD.
If the certification process prevents people from having configurable values for the medical codes, then the process is broken.
It doesn't matter; if you were writing a system for dealing with these codes, the system should be flexible enough for the codes to change. What if there is some sort of revolutionary medical procedure that requires a new code? What if you want to sell the equipment to a country that has a different set of standards? There are plenty of reasons why someone might need to be able to change the codes.
TeX
This is not a text editor.
Which is exactly the point. We may believe that LulzSec is in the right, but at the end of the day they are breaking the law and if caught, they will be prosecuted for it. Chances are that a jury of their peers (at least in this country) will not acquit them, since most Americans buy into the notion that dangerous hackers are out to ruin their lives and their childrens' lives (or something like that).
ed is an excellent replacement for vim for any purpose.
Emacs? Emacs.