Before any of you say, "stripping is already available", keep in mind how many co-workers don't even know what cookies are.
You insensitive clod! My coworkers are all CS grad students.
Seriously though, they don't take any steps to strip metadata, even though it is well within their technical ability to do so, and even though they are generally aware of the risks.
Or, a repressive government could ban the tool itself, and imprison anyone who possesses it. Why would a repressive government have a problem making possession a crime?
Well it is just another steganography tool. The real issue is getting the tool to people in China without getting yourself or the people using the tool arrested. It is a bit of a bootstrapping problem, if you think about it: you need to sneak some data through the great firewall in order to sneak more data through the great firewall.
I saw this happen at my high school once -- someone thought it would be funny to connect one port of an old switch to another port on that same switch. The entire network was flooded for a day while the IT staff tried to figure out where the switch was.
That was years ago though, I would have thought that by now, these issues had been resolved.
"Nevermind the DRM...", exactly how does that affect me, the end user?
Perhaps because you cannot install entire classes of applications that Apple does not want people running on their iPads? Certain licenses are forbidden on the iPad, and the DRM is used to enforce that. You can hack your device to escape the DRM, but Apple is actively working to thwart that.
So I cant easily steal applications from someone elses account, big deal!
What makes you think that mandatory system-wide DRM has anything to do with "stealing?" If the purpose of the DRM was the enforcement of software licenses, then it would be optional for application writers; after all, someone who writes libre software will not benefit from DRM.
Make no mistake, the DRM is there so that users will not be able to take control of their devices, and to enforce a particular model of consumerism. If you want to be less of a consumer and write your own iPad/iPhone software, you need to pay Apple and get their permission; and you can forget about allowing the users of your software to share it with other people, since libre licensing is not allowed (and the DRM will enforce that restriction). The DRM also gives Apple a convenient way to project a "family friendly" image, by banning pornographic software, and to stay on every politicians' good side by banning apps that ridicule them (unless, of course, the media that has been so friendly to Apple starts circulating stories about some cartoon that was banned; then that particular cartoon will be allowed, but the rest remain banned).
And look, when possible, Jobs himself has spoken out against DRM.
Yes, he did say that, but guess what? Even though Apple started selling music without DRM, they continued selling iPods with a DRM system (obfuscating the names of songs, AKA speed bump DRM), and they continue to force people to use their proprietary software (iTunes) to get the DRM free music. In a technical sense, they removed some DRM, but they seem to have largely missed the point.
Exactly what is the iPad "denying" you?
How about the freedom to release libre software? How about the freedom to ignore Apple's model of what sort of person their users should be?
I have to worry that my university is going to start pushing for iPad textbooks. What happens if I want to borrow someone's textbook? What if I need to print copies of chapters for my personal use? What if I want to refer back to a book that I used three years ago? There is no guarantee that paper textbooks will remain available if the iPad is pushed for textbooks, and there is no guarantee that students will have the same freedoms with iPad textbooks as they do with paper textbooks (and every reason to think we will lose some freedoms; textbook publishers are constantly looking for ways to thwart sharing and used book sales).
No, this is not about liking some other device or wanting to run Apple myself. It is about ever stronger DRM being pushed by a company with one of the best marketing departments in the world, and the ensuing loss of freedom. You might not care; fine, go have fun with your iPad. I and plenty of others do care, and we are not going to stop caring just because you don't see a problem.
So because you happen to like the iPad, there couldn't possibly be a valid complaint about it? Nevermind the DRM, that is perfectly OK, because nobody has yet marketed a touchscreen table as successfully as the iPad. And since the iPad can change font sizes or perform TTS, we should just ignore the fact that there is no libre software allowed or that applications are being censored by Apple. Hey, how could any of that matter to anyone, when you and a bunch of other people like the iPad?
Some of us prefer news that is not delivered via restricted, proprietary channels.
You forgot DRM. The iPad has lots of that. Murdoch sees a computer its users don't fully control, and like a cartoon character, his eyes become spinning dollar signs.
I've read about OpenPGP's web of trust, but how can this work without frequent air travel to get a key signed by people living in different parts of the world?
Well part of the idea behind the web of trust is that you can derive trust from others who travel. So, for example, you might obtain my certificate, and it was already signed by 3 people whose fingerprints you verified; then you have some assurance that my key is authentic. Since there is a chance that people are conspiring against you, you might limit this to be 1- or 2-deep, so that you don't wind up with too long of a WoT chain. You can also have different levels of trustworthiness; perhaps you require three signatures from people you are personally familiar with, or 6 from people you are not (or some combination, like 2 familiar and 2 unfamiliar; as far as I know, this is not currently implemented with PGP).
Right now, though, it is fairly common for people to wind up on the fringes of the web, and have too few signatures on their key for someone they have not met to be able to derive trust from those signatures. This is especially problematic if you want to communicate with someone who is not part of the same social circles you frequent; even among people who have many signatures on their key, it is not uncommon for there to be little or no overlap in those signatures. Bridging these gaps may be difficult without travel, a situation I have found myself in many times (I have quite a few keys in my keyring of unknown validity, which I have seen used to sign messages in mailing lists). With more participants, this would be less of a problem; it might be interesting to try to calculate what the critical mass would have to be for this situation to become vanishingly rare.
The way things should be done is simply not the way things are actually done.
Do you mean this in the sense of "practice will never match theory" or in the sense that "practice can and should change soon"?
Mostly in the "practice will never match theory" sense. In theory, when someone sees an SSL warning, they should immediately stop and call up whatever business they were trying to connect to. In practice, people click right through these warnings. In theory, people should seek signatures on their PGP keys; in practice, many do not bother, and give no thought to communicating with anyone outside of their immediate circle of friends. Most people don't really care about computer security until it is too late (e.g. their bank account is drained, someone forges an email from them, their patients' records are leaked, etc.), certainly not enough to actually put any effort in (like verifying a fingerprint).
For a small business, there is always the option of making sales the old-fashioned way: in person. Perhaps that would be a good place to verify a fingerprint. It would also help people avoid scams, since the scammers would have to meet their victims in person.
As for blogs, forums, and wikis...well, if MITM attacks are a serious concern, then perhaps people should take the time to find the fingerprints for the keys. Maybe even build a web of trust model.
Look, I am not a fool, and I don't actually think that the majority of people would be willing to take the time to verify key fingerprints and maintain their key rings. The way things should be done is simply not the way things are actually done.
Well, perhaps people need to reevaluated the risks involved with giving credit card numbers to small, unknown businesses that they cannot find any information about except online.
The problem is the Etisalat is not trustworthy -- they may sign certificates for MITM attacks, for example. Personally, I think the CA system is broken, and would not trust any of the widely known CAs; any one of them might be signing fake certificates for a certain major world government. If Hushmail is willing to compromise its users' security, then why wouldn't a CA be willing to do the same?
I am not so sure about that one. Considering that T-mobile blocks faxes unless you pay an extra fee, why wouldn't they block all but a handful of websites unless you pay up? Why not then charge those websites that are not blocked as well -- I wouldn't put anything past cell carriers in the USA.
Sorry, but with the way mobile internet access is growing, any compromise that allows non-neutral mobile internet is very bad. If Google wanted to "not be evil," they would have gotten up and left the room if Verizon refused to budge on that issue.
If no company ever wants to offer a neutral wireless network to play on
I would call such a situation a massive policy failure, especially considering how many people now use wireless broadband and how the market is expected to grow over the next few years. Right now is the time to act on wireless network neutrality, not 5 years from now when the wireless carriers have established non-neutral networks.
The real problem is that = is used for assignment; if:= or == were used for assignment instead, then = would be fine for comparison. You cannot have = used for both assignment and comparison because in C, both assignments and comparisons return integers, and so this would be ambiguous:
if(x = 3)
Also, you want assignments to return values so you can do this: x = y = 3;
For normal usage patterns? You mean, browsing the web and playing music and movies, which is what the most common use case of a personal computer (including a tablet) is? Are you really saying that you can browse the web better using Apple products than any other hardware or OS?
I think next they'll make the home entertainment center common
Their pro-DRM stance should fit in nicely with the current state of affairs surrounding set-top boxes.
And possibly finally bring around the TV revolution where more people get series and movies via iTunes over the Internet than over broadcasts and cable.
Nicely DRMed and "protected" (read: restricted) from the users doing what they want to do with the clips. Mandatory, un-skippable advertising? You bet! Time shifting? Only for the shows that they want to let you time shift!
You know, a lot of us were saying that it is unfortunate that there is a market for the iPad, since it is so restrictive and designed to undermine its users' freedoms. If Apple ventures into TV, we will probably wind up saying the same thing, unless Apple decides to do an about-face (I won't hold my breath).
The typical screeds about how Apple's success is due to marketing prowess, reality distortion fields, media sycophancy, etc. are all a bunch of red herrings.
They certainly are not "red herrings," they are relevant and the reason that Apple has been successful this past decade. Case-in-point: they have everyone calling their line of personal computers "Macs" and every other company's products "PCs," despite the fact that the differences at this point are superficial. Apple also has everyone convinced that their products are "better," even though few people can really say what makes Apple products "better" and what Apple products are actually better than.
The OLPC XO was very easy to use, yet somehow Sugar/Linux doesn't get the same sort of attention Mac OS X or iOS do. Being easy to use, being polished, being "better" does not get you very far.
Slashdot Mirror
Or, you can just use ImageMagick:
$ mogrify -strip image.jpg
Before any of you say, "stripping is already available", keep in mind how many co-workers don't even know what cookies are.
You insensitive clod! My coworkers are all CS grad students.
Seriously though, they don't take any steps to strip metadata, even though it is well within their technical ability to do so, and even though they are generally aware of the risks.
Or, a repressive government could ban the tool itself, and imprison anyone who possesses it. Why would a repressive government have a problem making possession a crime?
Well it is just another steganography tool. The real issue is getting the tool to people in China without getting yourself or the people using the tool arrested. It is a bit of a bootstrapping problem, if you think about it: you need to sneak some data through the great firewall in order to sneak more data through the great firewall.
I saw this happen at my high school once -- someone thought it would be funny to connect one port of an old switch to another port on that same switch. The entire network was flooded for a day while the IT staff tried to figure out where the switch was.
That was years ago though, I would have thought that by now, these issues had been resolved.
"Nevermind the DRM...", exactly how does that affect me, the end user?
Perhaps because you cannot install entire classes of applications that Apple does not want people running on their iPads? Certain licenses are forbidden on the iPad, and the DRM is used to enforce that. You can hack your device to escape the DRM, but Apple is actively working to thwart that.
So I cant easily steal applications from someone elses account, big deal!
What makes you think that mandatory system-wide DRM has anything to do with "stealing?" If the purpose of the DRM was the enforcement of software licenses, then it would be optional for application writers; after all, someone who writes libre software will not benefit from DRM.
Make no mistake, the DRM is there so that users will not be able to take control of their devices, and to enforce a particular model of consumerism. If you want to be less of a consumer and write your own iPad/iPhone software, you need to pay Apple and get their permission; and you can forget about allowing the users of your software to share it with other people, since libre licensing is not allowed (and the DRM will enforce that restriction). The DRM also gives Apple a convenient way to project a "family friendly" image, by banning pornographic software, and to stay on every politicians' good side by banning apps that ridicule them (unless, of course, the media that has been so friendly to Apple starts circulating stories about some cartoon that was banned; then that particular cartoon will be allowed, but the rest remain banned).
And look, when possible, Jobs himself has spoken out against DRM.
Yes, he did say that, but guess what? Even though Apple started selling music without DRM, they continued selling iPods with a DRM system (obfuscating the names of songs, AKA speed bump DRM), and they continue to force people to use their proprietary software (iTunes) to get the DRM free music. In a technical sense, they removed some DRM, but they seem to have largely missed the point.
Exactly what is the iPad "denying" you?
How about the freedom to release libre software? How about the freedom to ignore Apple's model of what sort of person their users should be?
I have to worry that my university is going to start pushing for iPad textbooks. What happens if I want to borrow someone's textbook? What if I need to print copies of chapters for my personal use? What if I want to refer back to a book that I used three years ago? There is no guarantee that paper textbooks will remain available if the iPad is pushed for textbooks, and there is no guarantee that students will have the same freedoms with iPad textbooks as they do with paper textbooks (and every reason to think we will lose some freedoms; textbook publishers are constantly looking for ways to thwart sharing and used book sales).
No, this is not about liking some other device or wanting to run Apple myself. It is about ever stronger DRM being pushed by a company with one of the best marketing departments in the world, and the ensuing loss of freedom. You might not care; fine, go have fun with your iPad. I and plenty of others do care, and we are not going to stop caring just because you don't see a problem.
So because you happen to like the iPad, there couldn't possibly be a valid complaint about it? Nevermind the DRM, that is perfectly OK, because nobody has yet marketed a touchscreen table as successfully as the iPad. And since the iPad can change font sizes or perform TTS, we should just ignore the fact that there is no libre software allowed or that applications are being censored by Apple. Hey, how could any of that matter to anyone, when you and a bunch of other people like the iPad?
Some of us prefer news that is not delivered via restricted, proprietary channels.
You forgot DRM. The iPad has lots of that. Murdoch sees a computer its users don't fully control, and like a cartoon character, his eyes become spinning dollar signs.
I've read about OpenPGP's web of trust, but how can this work without frequent air travel to get a key signed by people living in different parts of the world?
Well part of the idea behind the web of trust is that you can derive trust from others who travel. So, for example, you might obtain my certificate, and it was already signed by 3 people whose fingerprints you verified; then you have some assurance that my key is authentic. Since there is a chance that people are conspiring against you, you might limit this to be 1- or 2-deep, so that you don't wind up with too long of a WoT chain. You can also have different levels of trustworthiness; perhaps you require three signatures from people you are personally familiar with, or 6 from people you are not (or some combination, like 2 familiar and 2 unfamiliar; as far as I know, this is not currently implemented with PGP).
Right now, though, it is fairly common for people to wind up on the fringes of the web, and have too few signatures on their key for someone they have not met to be able to derive trust from those signatures. This is especially problematic if you want to communicate with someone who is not part of the same social circles you frequent; even among people who have many signatures on their key, it is not uncommon for there to be little or no overlap in those signatures. Bridging these gaps may be difficult without travel, a situation I have found myself in many times (I have quite a few keys in my keyring of unknown validity, which I have seen used to sign messages in mailing lists). With more participants, this would be less of a problem; it might be interesting to try to calculate what the critical mass would have to be for this situation to become vanishingly rare.
The way things should be done is simply not the way things are actually done.
Do you mean this in the sense of "practice will never match theory" or in the sense that "practice can and should change soon"?
Mostly in the "practice will never match theory" sense. In theory, when someone sees an SSL warning, they should immediately stop and call up whatever business they were trying to connect to. In practice, people click right through these warnings. In theory, people should seek signatures on their PGP keys; in practice, many do not bother, and give no thought to communicating with anyone outside of their immediate circle of friends. Most people don't really care about computer security until it is too late (e.g. their bank account is drained, someone forges an email from them, their patients' records are leaked, etc.), certainly not enough to actually put any effort in (like verifying a fingerprint).
For a small business, there is always the option of making sales the old-fashioned way: in person. Perhaps that would be a good place to verify a fingerprint. It would also help people avoid scams, since the scammers would have to meet their victims in person.
As for blogs, forums, and wikis...well, if MITM attacks are a serious concern, then perhaps people should take the time to find the fingerprints for the keys. Maybe even build a web of trust model.
Look, I am not a fool, and I don't actually think that the majority of people would be willing to take the time to verify key fingerprints and maintain their key rings. The way things should be done is simply not the way things are actually done.
Well, perhaps people need to reevaluated the risks involved with giving credit card numbers to small, unknown businesses that they cannot find any information about except online.
Certificates work just fine in the "real world;" it is the CA system that is the broken.
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/life-without-ca
The problem is the Etisalat is not trustworthy -- they may sign certificates for MITM attacks, for example. Personally, I think the CA system is broken, and would not trust any of the widely known CAs; any one of them might be signing fake certificates for a certain major world government. If Hushmail is willing to compromise its users' security, then why wouldn't a CA be willing to do the same?
Good thing the Wall Street types are not fans of scifi.
I believe that the () was a typo, and that the students were shown this: 4+3+2=____+2=_____
Not only is blocking content illegal
I am not so sure about that one. Considering that T-mobile blocks faxes unless you pay an extra fee, why wouldn't they block all but a handful of websites unless you pay up? Why not then charge those websites that are not blocked as well -- I wouldn't put anything past cell carriers in the USA.
Sorry, but with the way mobile internet access is growing, any compromise that allows non-neutral mobile internet is very bad. If Google wanted to "not be evil," they would have gotten up and left the room if Verizon refused to budge on that issue.
If no company ever wants to offer a neutral wireless network to play on
I would call such a situation a massive policy failure, especially considering how many people now use wireless broadband and how the market is expected to grow over the next few years. Right now is the time to act on wireless network neutrality, not 5 years from now when the wireless carriers have established non-neutral networks.
The real problem is that = is used for assignment; if := or == were used for assignment instead, then = would be fine for comparison. You cannot have = used for both assignment and comparison because in C, both assignments and comparisons return integers, and so this would be ambiguous:
if(x = 3)
Also, you want assignments to return values so you can do this: x = y = 3;
Hm, I always learned that assignment was :=...
For normal usage patterns? You mean, browsing the web and playing music and movies, which is what the most common use case of a personal computer (including a tablet) is? Are you really saying that you can browse the web better using Apple products than any other hardware or OS?
I think next they'll make the home entertainment center common
Their pro-DRM stance should fit in nicely with the current state of affairs surrounding set-top boxes.
And possibly finally bring around the TV revolution where more people get series and movies via iTunes over the Internet than over broadcasts and cable.
Nicely DRMed and "protected" (read: restricted) from the users doing what they want to do with the clips. Mandatory, un-skippable advertising? You bet! Time shifting? Only for the shows that they want to let you time shift!
You know, a lot of us were saying that it is unfortunate that there is a market for the iPad, since it is so restrictive and designed to undermine its users' freedoms. If Apple ventures into TV, we will probably wind up saying the same thing, unless Apple decides to do an about-face (I won't hold my breath).
Well, depending on who you ask...
http://www.defectivebydesign.org/ipad
The typical screeds about how Apple's success is due to marketing prowess, reality distortion fields, media sycophancy, etc. are all a bunch of red herrings.
They certainly are not "red herrings," they are relevant and the reason that Apple has been successful this past decade. Case-in-point: they have everyone calling their line of personal computers "Macs" and every other company's products "PCs," despite the fact that the differences at this point are superficial. Apple also has everyone convinced that their products are "better," even though few people can really say what makes Apple products "better" and what Apple products are actually better than.
The OLPC XO was very easy to use, yet somehow Sugar/Linux doesn't get the same sort of attention Mac OS X or iOS do. Being easy to use, being polished, being "better" does not get you very far.