But how would informing you of the issues have been better for the company, at least short-term?
Take your Hertz example; not knowing the extent of the problem, you waited around until you got a car - and Hertz got paid. Had they told you that no vehicle would be available until 2AM, you would have taken a taxi and Hertz would have been out a rental.
Of course, long-term these attitudes can cost a company customers, who will look to their competitors rather than use a company with such poor service. But that's less of a fear when a company is large enough that the alternatives are unavailable or unpalatable (e.g., given the choice between frequenting a big-national-chain or an unknown local business, most people chose the former... especially if they themselves aren't locals). And businesses these days aren't really known for looking out for long-term problems anyway...
The short of it is that there is often very little incentive for companies to admit their shortcomings and very expensive reasons not to.
For that matter, the Nokia 1100 alone sold 250 million; that one model/alone/ equals 1/4 of the sales of/all/ of the different models of iPhone sold. If we were to group together all the Nokia phones, I'm sure those sales would dwarf Apple's phone sales.
The Bible has sold more than 6 billion copies; Agatha Christie books (they're including all the iPhones models as one lump quantity, we can include do the same with her books) has sold 2 billion books. Using the same logic, the Beatles have sold 2 billion albums. And these are just off the top of my head (stats all taken from statisticbrain.com, I've no idea as to their accuracy but assume the numbers are within a reasonable margin of correctness;-).
1 billion iPhones is an impressive achievement true, but its nowhere near "most popular product evah!".
Microsoft desperately wants to become a services-based company. It's been on their game-plan since the early 90s (at least!) and they have been incrementally moving the company - and their customers - in that direction ever since. For a long time, everyone - including Microsoft - assumed that the ultimate goal was to charge a yearly - or monthly! - fee for the use of their software, be it their Office productivity suite or Windows itself. Initially they were hamstrung both by the lack of infrastructure (e.g., high-speed internet) and customer acceptance (outside of corporations, the idea of "licensing" software - as opposed to buying it - was absolutely foreign to people). Nowadays, with high-speed downlinks and almost two decades of slow-but-fruitful customer education, neither of these problems are as much a roadblock as they were before, and we've already seen Microsoft dip their toes into service-based sales (e.g., Office 365, as one example). But as the importance of desktop PCs and operating systems decline, recent indications are that Microsoft is becoming less interested in monetizing their own software as they are in creating a platform where they can monetize OTHER people's software. The massive buildup of Azure and the pushing of the UWP platform are the two most obvious examples of this strategy.
Ultimately, I think that Microsoft will license their "client / store" for free so they can grab the services fees, even to the point where their reliance on Windows becomes a secondary consideration. That's right; I forsee a day where - if they can get UWP running securely - we might even see Microsoft-blessed apps running on Linux (as well as MacOS, Android, and any other system they feel they could monetize). The Seattle behemoth is transitioning itself away from its Windows monopoly (not entirely without resistance from within) because they recognize that - long term - remaining an OS developer isn't going to be a viable strategy. I think this is a major reason that the Windows10 upgrade was released for free (and why Microsoft pushed so hard with the XBox and Windows Phone), as it greatly increases their potential market (a lot of Microsoft decisions start making sense if you ask yourself, "long-term, does this help Microsoft move towards a services-based business?").
Obviously, third-party store-fronts like Steam challenge this goal, so while I don't necessarily believe accusations that Microsoft are sabotaging their competition, it wouldn't entirely surprise me.
The election is not a game where you root for one of two sides and you "lose" if the other side wins. It is one of the few opportunities where "The People" get to give their say on which sort of government they want. By voting for a candidate, you say, "this person represents my interests best, he is the one I want to lead the government for the next 2 (representatives)/ 4 (president) / six (senator) years.
Even if the person you support does not win, your are still expressing your opinion on which things you want the government to support. The other candidates/will/ take notice of these opinions if it threatens their own chance of victory. If a significant percentage of people vote for the third-party candidate who promised to ban H1Bs, you can be that the major candidates will take that up as their rallying cry too (especially the one most threatened by that third-party candidate). It might not happen overnight, or even during the next election cycle, but if enough votes are at risk, the other candidates will modify their own platforms rather than lose the election.
Yes, it's probably true that ultimately only a Democrat or a Republican will get into office; historically and mathematically, the odds are in their favor. However, that's no reason to throw away one of your few opportunities to control your own government. Vote for the candidate who best reflects your own beliefs - whether he (or she) is a member of the two major parties or represents a third party. Yes, by doing so the "wrong guy" might get into office this year but honestly, that isn't as horrible as is often suggested (if the Republicans win this election, they aren't going to ship all homosexuals off to Gitmo, nuke Iran and forcibly return women to the kitchens; similarly, if the Democrats win, they aren't going to take away our guns, make us all take gay lovers and declare universal socialism).
The only ones who benefit from the idea that "voting for a third party is a waste" are the major political parties, who would prefer to maintain the status quo.
It's also important to remember that change takes time, especially since our political system is designed to be inefficient (and we should be grateful for that; you should be scared whenever government makes fast and sweeping changes. It will either be poorly thought out policy that will have a lot of negative repercussions or policy designed to benefit a very few). Just because "your side" doesn't "win" this round doesn't mean you should give up on them and vote for a candidate who doesn't represent you as well. If you - and enough other people - believe in something, your voice will eventually be heard.
So if the other guy stands for what you believe in better than the Democrats or Republicans, vote third party, even if you feel that by doing so you might be helping Clinton or Trump lose because they don't have your vote. It's the only real way you have to get the politicians to notice you.
This has been expected for/decades/. I remember reading an article in PC World magazine where Bill Gates commented on how he'd like Microsoft to move to a subscription-based service, comparing it directly to cable companies (this was back in 1993 or so, so you'll pardon me if I don't have the exact issue and quote). The infrastructure and customer acceptance didn't make this possible - the Internet was only just starting to enter the public eye - , so it was just a pipe-dream back then. But Microsoft plays a long game and a lot of their actions make a lot more sense if you view them through the lens of slowly and carefully pushing people to an era where they pay a monthly fee to use their computers.
This is just the next move in a long, long strategy.
Plus, most missiles don't actually have that much maneuvering capability. They are usually solid-fuel boosters so you can't throttle the thrust significantly and their tiny winglets are more to keep them stabilized than to help them turn (in fact, most missiles only have an initial boost and then glide the rest of the way to their target). It's a commonly used trope in Hollywood to have missiles unerringly follow the Ace Hero Fighter Pilot as he does Immelmans and S-turns and daringly weaves through the narrow canyon with the missile just seconds behind, but that is nothing like real life. A missile's main advantage is its speed; it closes on you faster than you can maneuver out of its vision cone, but if you manage that you've usually beaten the weapon. Ground-to-air missiles are even more limited because so much of their thrust is wasted just getting the weapon up to speed and altitude.
It is possible to make a missile that could be more aggressive (longer thrust, better maneuverability), but this would drive the cost up of the weapon significantly; you would essentially be building a kamikaze aircraft, which is an expensive way to take down another plane. If you are going to make an autonomous drone with that sort of chase capability, better to make it re-usable and then hang cheaper, stupider weapons off of/that/.
Perhaps the future is fighters carrying drones carrying missiles?;-)
Will they cave, or will they stand tall? Because if they cave, the US and the world will follow Putin's lead.
They'll cave because, except for a small subset of companies, most don't really care what sort of encryption they use (or if they encrypt at all) because it won't be the companies that pays the price for their short-sightedness. Rather than risk losing out on the Russian markets, companies will obediently use the Russian-blessed encryption. When the inevitable happens and somebody (be it criminal hackers or the Russian government) use the mandated backdoor to break into their servers, they'll just pass the cost onto their customers. If their customer database will be compromised - everybody's government identification number / credit-card numbers / health and medical information is out on the web - they will just do what every other company does in that situation: hide the breach for as long as they can and once they are found out send out an email with free 1-year "credit monitoring", as if that makes up for it. Of course, it might be the company's own information that gets stolen, but that stuff usually isn't as valuable to a company as they think it is; they'll maybe take a hit on the market, and make up for it by firing a bunch of their peons. Then it will just be back to business as usual.
Of course, long-term these sorts of breaches can be devastating; international corporations will wonder why they keep losing out deals to locals who always seem to know what the foreign companies are up ahead of time (because you can bet the government will use this for corporate espionage to better the lot of their own constituents), but rare is the modern corporation that ever looks at anything long term. They'll be too terrified of losing out on those precious rubles today to worry that they might be knocked out of the market entirely tomorrow.
Now, if we actually held companies accountable for these breaches - especially when using something as stupid as encryption with a guaranteed backdoor - and the company suffered financial or criminal sanctions for their actions, then maybe it would be a different story. But seeing as how the US government also wants its own backdoors, it's unlikely they'll criminalize anyone using encryption that has a secret government key anytime soon...
Worse, it's not even an advert for a new and exciting product. I mean, it might be a new SanDisk case, but there have been similar implementations available for/years/ (right to offering options with an without extra battery). Some of them use the lightning port (IIRC, some of these devices even pre-dated Lightning and used the 30-pin port) and others used WiFi, but the idea is not new.
At least if you are going to spam us with slashvertisements, make it for interesting new products. This is the equivalent of a breathless announcement about how Honda is manufacturing some sort of car. It's not news, it's not interesting; it's just product placement. It's the sort of thing I expected from Dice; I was hoping Slashdot's new overlords would be a bit less weaselly (or at least would be more subtle about it:)
Some day when our neural implants wake us up at 3am with notifications full of advertising spam, we'll all laugh and pine for the good old days when we could simply ignore the phone and go back to bed. We're already tumbling down the slippery slope. They can pretend to care and apologize all they want, we know the truth.
I am reminded of this:
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 21st century?"
Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree. - Futurama, A Fishful of Dollars
As the quote indicates, its probably far too late for us to try and draw a line at dreams -- or neural implants or system-tray notifications -- as the places where advertisements dare not go. We've repeatedly shown the advertisers that they can stick their messages anywhere and we'll roll over quietly.
But - after all is installed - can you go back and uninstall the KB patches specific to the Win10 update (e.g., KB3035883)?
Because if you can it just/might/ be a useful alternative to manually updating Windows7; just run the "Convenience-'We-Can't-call-it-a-Service-Pack-without-extending-the-product-lifespan'-Rollup", uninstall the ten or so Win10/telemetry patches, and you're good to go.
How does this affect me? Why is this important to anyone except Maria Schneider? I'll get modded down to -1 for asking this because Slashdot users don't like answering important questions. But this needs to be asked, and I challenge any of you to give me a real answer rather than insulting me. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone here is up to the challenge.
No, you are getting modded down to -1 because you ask theexactsamequestion over and over again regardless of the topic, indicating that you are more interested in trolling than getting an actual answer to your question. The only reason I am responding and quoting you is so people can see and recognize your pathetic attempts at begging for attention.
If you want to be pedantic, the whole "hired" thing is a bit off too. Unless they are paying the AI directly and it can choose what to do with its paycheck, a more accurate term would be "purchased".
And don't get me started on the whole "AI" thing...
"Unfortunately, as Windows 10 has grown in adoption and usage, we have seen some software programs circumvent the design of Windows 10 and redirect you to search providers that were not designed to work with Cortana. The result is a compromised experience that is less reliable and predictable"
The Microsoft stooge went on to say:
"Of course, we/could/ have created a framework that incorporated the ability to use different search providers, since this is obviously something in which some customers are interested. But instead, we have decided to further limit customer choice, breaking third-party applications, so we can bolster the diminishing market-share of the financial black-hole that is Bing, while pretending it's all in the name of "improving" the customer experience. And then we'll look around all confused as people stop buying our products because we've stopped providing them something that works for/them/ in lieu of offering something that works for/us/."
While the technical aspect is a "non-issue" (as pretty much anyone with any understanding of tech could guess), the story itself is neither a non-issue nor is it false. Rather, the DA is backpedaling and trying to cover his ass. "Oh, there was no cyber-pathogen, I was just worried about what the Farook might have done with the phone."
It is as much bullshit as his initial claim. He lied in an amicus brief to a judge with his initial claim. That he can get away with such a blatant lie to a judge - and in such a high-profile case - is embarrassing. He ought to at least lose his job, if not get smacked with perjury or contempt of court.
While I think the accusation made by the DA is bollocks, I don't think the story itself is so out-of-left-field as to be completely unbelievable. I could imagine a situation where some ransomware (perhaps a Cryptolocker variant) was uploaded to county computers and it has been secretly encrypting data in the background, and if it doesn't receive a special code at certain intervals it will chuck the encryption key making all that data inaccessible. This would create a clear-and-immediate need for Apple to unlock the phone, which is obviously what this claim is intended to present.
Now, as I said, I do not think the hypothetical situation above has any truth to it, but I can imagine such a scheme being thought up as a reason to force Apple to unlock the phone. The term "cyber pathogen" sounds like something a non-technical person made up trying to sound as if he knows what he is talking about. "Hey, let's spin a story about how there's a virus on the phone that might take down the government network, meaning there is a clear and immediate need for Apple to unlock the phone. "Okay, but 'virus' sounds so common; educated people use words like 'pathogen'... and since this is all on a computer, I'll prefix it with 'cyber-'."
I've more worry that somebody - whether the FBI as 'proof' that there is a compelling need for the phone to be unlocked, or now the DA to cover his own ass - will mock up some sort of 'evidence' that there was some sort of intrusion into the county's network by Farook. Provide a few doctored log files showing Farook's phone's IP made a connection with the network and have somebody with a bit more technical aptitude explain the "situation". Ramos' initial brief will be explained away as a non-expert writing up a claim in haste without taking the time to fully understand the terminology because the situation was so dire.
Wasn't there a thing where Comodo was issuing false certificates for Google, Microsoft, etc. too a few years ago? I think their servers got breached too... Oh yeah, there was.
These guys have repeatedly been in the news for having problems like this. It certainly does not make for a very compelling reason to trust your security to them.
Well, USB 3.5" floppy disk drives can be had. I've/never/ found a 5.25" or 8" floppy drive with a USB interface. And - believe it or not - some people still use those.
(not me though; I saw the way the wind was blowing and wisely converted everything to Zip disks:-)
Just don't subscribe to anything -- every page requires you to grant it permission.
No, it requires more than that. According to Mozilla themselves, "Firefox maintains an active connection to a push service in order to receive push messages as long as it is open." Supposedly the connection is encrypted and anonymized, but you'll have to take their word on it and anyway, it's another potentially-vulnerable service running in the background. So it's not just a matter of "don't subscribe and you'll be safe"; there needs to be a way to disable this service entirely.
TrackMeNot is a browser-extension for Firefox and Chrome that sends semi-random search requests to several search engines with the goal of disrupting this sort of tracking. Well, it's more aimed at preventing commercial entities from creating an accurate picture of your web-browsing habits, but it probably adds some noise to the intelligence gathering too. By default it pulls random keywords from newspaper headlines, but you can configure it to use (or avoid) certain keywords, as well as tweak the frequency of the requests. It runs automatically in the background whenever your browser is open.
TrackMeNot isn't really useful in hiding your behavior; it just throws in spurious data that makes legitimate data look less accurate. It's really aimed more at devaluing marketing databases with the (admittedly vain) hope that they'll give up on the whole thing;-)
Note: it does use extra CPU cycles and bandwidth, so if you are constrained in either this tool may not be for you. Also, tweak the timing of those search requests carefully or the search engines might blacklist you as a bot. Having said that, I've been using this plug-in for several years now and it's rarely caused me any problems.
I live in the middle of the Sprawl; if I'm lucky, on a very clear night, I see 9 stars (I counted). If I drive 20 miles, I'll at least see more stars than I have fingers but I'd probably need twice that for a even a/chance/ to see the comet. And for "astronomy class", ohmigosh-the-universe-is-huge-I-need-to-go-home-and-reconsider-my-place-in-the-universe type of sky-gazing, we're talking at least a 200 mile drive to get clear of the light and pollution of the cities. And I/know/ that whatever day I set aside to make that drive, it's going to be cloudy that night.
It's a shame too. I personally think that the reason our society is becoming insular and risk-averse is that - with so many of us cloistered in cities - we no longer have the awe-inspiring panorama of the night-sky coming out every night to challenge us. Surrounded by our warrens, the universe looks conquered already, so why bother spending trillions just to poke the "rare" unexplored bit? Sometimes I half-believe our society would react like in Asimov's "Nightfall" were we all suddenly to be confronted with an unblemished night sky again.
Ummm... I hate to break it to you, but the verb form of "gift", as in "bestow a gift", dates back to the 16th century. It's not a modern or American usage; it is a long-recognized usage of the word.
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming...
Trump is still around because there is a large base of people who buy into the stuff he says.
Even more, he is still around because he sells papers (well, TV advertising). Even people who don't support him can't help but turn on the TV to see what wacky idea he has come up with today. The media knows this, so they throw him in our faces every chance they get. If he wasn't such an entertaining spectacle, the media would have dropped him months ago and he would have been stumping in half-filled halls to a dwindling number of supporters while the news focused on the other candidates (probably trying to dig up dirt on marital infidelities or contrast a candidates current policies with a statement he made in high-school).
Of course, Trump is well aware of this too, so he keeps saying ever more outrageous things just so he can keep making headlines. Not only does this feed his huge ego, it increases his visibility and makes him seem a viable candidate. Many people refuse to vote for somebody unless they think there's a chance that person can win, and with Trump in the news all the time, it makes him seem more popular than he really is (of course, eventually this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy).
Trump is one of the greatest political trolls ever, and his success is largely because the news is so addicted to advertising dollars they can't help but feed the troll.
What really terrifies me is that next election, other politicians are going to take note of Trump's success and are going to follow in his footsteps until eventually we'll end up with somebody like President Dwayne Elizondo 'Mountain Dew' Herbert Camacho.
Slashdot Mirror
But how would informing you of the issues have been better for the company, at least short-term?
Take your Hertz example; not knowing the extent of the problem, you waited around until you got a car - and Hertz got paid. Had they told you that no vehicle would be available until 2AM, you would have taken a taxi and Hertz would have been out a rental.
Of course, long-term these attitudes can cost a company customers, who will look to their competitors rather than use a company with such poor service. But that's less of a fear when a company is large enough that the alternatives are unavailable or unpalatable (e.g., given the choice between frequenting a big-national-chain or an unknown local business, most people chose the former... especially if they themselves aren't locals). And businesses these days aren't really known for looking out for long-term problems anyway...
The short of it is that there is often very little incentive for companies to admit their shortcomings and very expensive reasons not to.
For that matter, the Nokia 1100 alone sold 250 million; that one model /alone/ equals 1/4 of the sales of /all/ of the different models of iPhone sold. If we were to group together all the Nokia phones, I'm sure those sales would dwarf Apple's phone sales.
Indeed, this is just cherry picking
The Bible has sold more than 6 billion copies; Agatha Christie books (they're including all the iPhones models as one lump quantity, we can include do the same with her books) has sold 2 billion books. Using the same logic, the Beatles have sold 2 billion albums. And these are just off the top of my head (stats all taken from statisticbrain.com, I've no idea as to their accuracy but assume the numbers are within a reasonable margin of correctness ;-).
1 billion iPhones is an impressive achievement true, but its nowhere near "most popular product evah!".
Microsoft desperately wants to become a services-based company. It's been on their game-plan since the early 90s (at least!) and they have been incrementally moving the company - and their customers - in that direction ever since. For a long time, everyone - including Microsoft - assumed that the ultimate goal was to charge a yearly - or monthly! - fee for the use of their software, be it their Office productivity suite or Windows itself. Initially they were hamstrung both by the lack of infrastructure (e.g., high-speed internet) and customer acceptance (outside of corporations, the idea of "licensing" software - as opposed to buying it - was absolutely foreign to people). Nowadays, with high-speed downlinks and almost two decades of slow-but-fruitful customer education, neither of these problems are as much a roadblock as they were before, and we've already seen Microsoft dip their toes into service-based sales (e.g., Office 365, as one example). But as the importance of desktop PCs and operating systems decline, recent indications are that Microsoft is becoming less interested in monetizing their own software as they are in creating a platform where they can monetize OTHER people's software. The massive buildup of Azure and the pushing of the UWP platform are the two most obvious examples of this strategy.
Ultimately, I think that Microsoft will license their "client / store" for free so they can grab the services fees, even to the point where their reliance on Windows becomes a secondary consideration. That's right; I forsee a day where - if they can get UWP running securely - we might even see Microsoft-blessed apps running on Linux (as well as MacOS, Android, and any other system they feel they could monetize). The Seattle behemoth is transitioning itself away from its Windows monopoly (not entirely without resistance from within) because they recognize that - long term - remaining an OS developer isn't going to be a viable strategy. I think this is a major reason that the Windows10 upgrade was released for free (and why Microsoft pushed so hard with the XBox and Windows Phone), as it greatly increases their potential market (a lot of Microsoft decisions start making sense if you ask yourself, "long-term, does this help Microsoft move towards a services-based business?").
Obviously, third-party store-fronts like Steam challenge this goal, so while I don't necessarily believe accusations that Microsoft are sabotaging their competition, it wouldn't entirely surprise me.
It was predicted even longer ago than that.
It's all about the guzzoline, mate. Better learn to drive fast and hard if you want to survive.
I /hate/ this argument.
The election is not a game where you root for one of two sides and you "lose" if the other side wins. It is one of the few opportunities where "The People" get to give their say on which sort of government they want. By voting for a candidate, you say, "this person represents my interests best, he is the one I want to lead the government for the next 2 (representatives)/ 4 (president) / six (senator) years.
Even if the person you support does not win, your are still expressing your opinion on which things you want the government to support. The other candidates /will/ take notice of these opinions if it threatens their own chance of victory. If a significant percentage of people vote for the third-party candidate who promised to ban H1Bs, you can be that the major candidates will take that up as their rallying cry too (especially the one most threatened by that third-party candidate). It might not happen overnight, or even during the next election cycle, but if enough votes are at risk, the other candidates will modify their own platforms rather than lose the election.
Yes, it's probably true that ultimately only a Democrat or a Republican will get into office; historically and mathematically, the odds are in their favor. However, that's no reason to throw away one of your few opportunities to control your own government. Vote for the candidate who best reflects your own beliefs - whether he (or she) is a member of the two major parties or represents a third party. Yes, by doing so the "wrong guy" might get into office this year but honestly, that isn't as horrible as is often suggested (if the Republicans win this election, they aren't going to ship all homosexuals off to Gitmo, nuke Iran and forcibly return women to the kitchens; similarly, if the Democrats win, they aren't going to take away our guns, make us all take gay lovers and declare universal socialism).
The only ones who benefit from the idea that "voting for a third party is a waste" are the major political parties, who would prefer to maintain the status quo.
It's also important to remember that change takes time, especially since our political system is designed to be inefficient (and we should be grateful for that; you should be scared whenever government makes fast and sweeping changes. It will either be poorly thought out policy that will have a lot of negative repercussions or policy designed to benefit a very few). Just because "your side" doesn't "win" this round doesn't mean you should give up on them and vote for a candidate who doesn't represent you as well. If you - and enough other people - believe in something, your voice will eventually be heard.
So if the other guy stands for what you believe in better than the Democrats or Republicans, vote third party, even if you feel that by doing so you might be helping Clinton or Trump lose because they don't have your vote. It's the only real way you have to get the politicians to notice you.
This has been expected for /decades/. I remember reading an article in PC World magazine where Bill Gates commented on how he'd like Microsoft to move to a subscription-based service, comparing it directly to cable companies (this was back in 1993 or so, so you'll pardon me if I don't have the exact issue and quote). The infrastructure and customer acceptance didn't make this possible - the Internet was only just starting to enter the public eye - , so it was just a pipe-dream back then. But Microsoft plays a long game and a lot of their actions make a lot more sense if you view them through the lens of slowly and carefully pushing people to an era where they pay a monthly fee to use their computers.
This is just the next move in a long, long strategy.
Plus, most missiles don't actually have that much maneuvering capability. They are usually solid-fuel boosters so you can't throttle the thrust significantly and their tiny winglets are more to keep them stabilized than to help them turn (in fact, most missiles only have an initial boost and then glide the rest of the way to their target). It's a commonly used trope in Hollywood to have missiles unerringly follow the Ace Hero Fighter Pilot as he does Immelmans and S-turns and daringly weaves through the narrow canyon with the missile just seconds behind, but that is nothing like real life. A missile's main advantage is its speed; it closes on you faster than you can maneuver out of its vision cone, but if you manage that you've usually beaten the weapon. Ground-to-air missiles are even more limited because so much of their thrust is wasted just getting the weapon up to speed and altitude.
It is possible to make a missile that could be more aggressive (longer thrust, better maneuverability), but this would drive the cost up of the weapon significantly; you would essentially be building a kamikaze aircraft, which is an expensive way to take down another plane. If you are going to make an autonomous drone with that sort of chase capability, better to make it re-usable and then hang cheaper, stupider weapons off of /that/.
Perhaps the future is fighters carrying drones carrying missiles? ;-)
Will they cave, or will they stand tall? Because if they cave, the US and the world will follow Putin's lead.
They'll cave because, except for a small subset of companies, most don't really care what sort of encryption they use (or if they encrypt at all) because it won't be the companies that pays the price for their short-sightedness. Rather than risk losing out on the Russian markets, companies will obediently use the Russian-blessed encryption. When the inevitable happens and somebody (be it criminal hackers or the Russian government) use the mandated backdoor to break into their servers, they'll just pass the cost onto their customers. If their customer database will be compromised - everybody's government identification number / credit-card numbers / health and medical information is out on the web - they will just do what every other company does in that situation: hide the breach for as long as they can and once they are found out send out an email with free 1-year "credit monitoring", as if that makes up for it. Of course, it might be the company's own information that gets stolen, but that stuff usually isn't as valuable to a company as they think it is; they'll maybe take a hit on the market, and make up for it by firing a bunch of their peons. Then it will just be back to business as usual.
Of course, long-term these sorts of breaches can be devastating; international corporations will wonder why they keep losing out deals to locals who always seem to know what the foreign companies are up ahead of time (because you can bet the government will use this for corporate espionage to better the lot of their own constituents), but rare is the modern corporation that ever looks at anything long term. They'll be too terrified of losing out on those precious rubles today to worry that they might be knocked out of the market entirely tomorrow.
Now, if we actually held companies accountable for these breaches - especially when using something as stupid as encryption with a guaranteed backdoor - and the company suffered financial or criminal sanctions for their actions, then maybe it would be a different story. But seeing as how the US government also wants its own backdoors, it's unlikely they'll criminalize anyone using encryption that has a secret government key anytime soon...
Worse, it's not even an advert for a new and exciting product. I mean, it might be a new SanDisk case, but there have been similar implementations available for /years/ (right to offering options with an without extra battery). Some of them use the lightning port (IIRC, some of these devices even pre-dated Lightning and used the 30-pin port) and others used WiFi, but the idea is not new.
At least if you are going to spam us with slashvertisements, make it for interesting new products. This is the equivalent of a breathless announcement about how Honda is manufacturing some sort of car. It's not news, it's not interesting; it's just product placement. It's the sort of thing I expected from Dice; I was hoping Slashdot's new overlords would be a bit less weaselly (or at least would be more subtle about it :)
Some day when our neural implants wake us up at 3am with notifications full of advertising spam, we'll all laugh and pine for the good old days when we could simply ignore the phone and go back to bed. We're already tumbling down the slippery slope. They can pretend to care and apologize all they want, we know the truth.
I am reminded of this:
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 21st century?"
Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.
- Futurama, A Fishful of Dollars
As the quote indicates, its probably far too late for us to try and draw a line at dreams -- or neural implants or system-tray notifications -- as the places where advertisements dare not go. We've repeatedly shown the advertisers that they can stick their messages anywhere and we'll roll over quietly.
But - after all is installed - can you go back and uninstall the KB patches specific to the Win10 update (e.g., KB3035883)?
Because if you can it just /might/ be a useful alternative to manually updating Windows7; just run the "Convenience-'We-Can't-call-it-a-Service-Pack-without-extending-the-product-lifespan'-Rollup", uninstall the ten or so Win10/telemetry patches, and you're good to go.
How does this affect me? Why is this important to anyone except Maria Schneider? I'll get modded down to -1 for asking this because Slashdot users don't like answering important questions. But this needs to be asked, and I challenge any of you to give me a real answer rather than insulting me. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone here is up to the challenge.
No, you are getting modded down to -1 because you ask the exact same question over and over again regardless of the topic, indicating that you are more interested in trolling than getting an actual answer to your question. The only reason I am responding and quoting you is so people can see and recognize your pathetic attempts at begging for attention.
Please people, stop responding to this guy.
If you want to be pedantic, the whole "hired" thing is a bit off too. Unless they are paying the AI directly and it can choose what to do with its paycheck, a more accurate term would be "purchased".
And don't get me started on the whole "AI" thing...
"Unfortunately, as Windows 10 has grown in adoption and usage, we have seen some software programs circumvent the design of Windows 10 and redirect you to search providers that were not designed to work with Cortana. The result is a compromised experience that is less reliable and predictable"
The Microsoft stooge went on to say:
"Of course, we /could/ have created a framework that incorporated the ability to use different search providers, since this is obviously something in which some customers are interested. But instead, we have decided to further limit customer choice, breaking third-party applications, so we can bolster the diminishing market-share of the financial black-hole that is Bing, while pretending it's all in the name of "improving" the customer experience. And then we'll look around all confused as people stop buying our products because we've stopped providing them something that works for /them/ in lieu of offering something that works for /us/."
An app that combines the the thoughtful security practices of Java and Adobe into one convenient package. What could possibly go wrong? ;-)
While the technical aspect is a "non-issue" (as pretty much anyone with any understanding of tech could guess), the story itself is neither a non-issue nor is it false. Rather, the DA is backpedaling and trying to cover his ass. "Oh, there was no cyber-pathogen, I was just worried about what the Farook might have done with the phone."
It is as much bullshit as his initial claim. He lied in an amicus brief to a judge with his initial claim. That he can get away with such a blatant lie to a judge - and in such a high-profile case - is embarrassing. He ought to at least lose his job, if not get smacked with perjury or contempt of court.
While I think the accusation made by the DA is bollocks, I don't think the story itself is so out-of-left-field as to be completely unbelievable. I could imagine a situation where some ransomware (perhaps a Cryptolocker variant) was uploaded to county computers and it has been secretly encrypting data in the background, and if it doesn't receive a special code at certain intervals it will chuck the encryption key making all that data inaccessible. This would create a clear-and-immediate need for Apple to unlock the phone, which is obviously what this claim is intended to present.
Now, as I said, I do not think the hypothetical situation above has any truth to it, but I can imagine such a scheme being thought up as a reason to force Apple to unlock the phone. The term "cyber pathogen" sounds like something a non-technical person made up trying to sound as if he knows what he is talking about. "Hey, let's spin a story about how there's a virus on the phone that might take down the government network, meaning there is a clear and immediate need for Apple to unlock the phone. "Okay, but 'virus' sounds so common; educated people use words like 'pathogen'... and since this is all on a computer, I'll prefix it with 'cyber-'."
I've more worry that somebody - whether the FBI as 'proof' that there is a compelling need for the phone to be unlocked, or now the DA to cover his own ass - will mock up some sort of 'evidence' that there was some sort of intrusion into the county's network by Farook. Provide a few doctored log files showing Farook's phone's IP made a connection with the network and have somebody with a bit more technical aptitude explain the "situation". Ramos' initial brief will be explained away as a non-expert writing up a claim in haste without taking the time to fully understand the terminology because the situation was so dire.
Wasn't there a thing where Comodo was issuing false certificates for Google, Microsoft, etc. too a few years ago? I think their servers got breached too... Oh yeah, there was.
These guys have repeatedly been in the news for having problems like this. It certainly does not make for a very compelling reason to trust your security to them.
USB floppy drives can be had.
Well, USB 3.5" floppy disk drives can be had. I've /never/ found a 5.25" or 8" floppy drive with a USB interface. And - believe it or not - some people still use those.
(not me though; I saw the way the wind was blowing and wisely converted everything to Zip disks :-)
Just don't subscribe to anything -- every page requires you to grant it permission.
No, it requires more than that. According to Mozilla themselves, "Firefox maintains an active connection to a push service in order to receive push messages as long as it is open." Supposedly the connection is encrypted and anonymized, but you'll have to take their word on it and anyway, it's another potentially-vulnerable service running in the background. So it's not just a matter of "don't subscribe and you'll be safe"; there needs to be a way to disable this service entirely.
Oh wait... there is.
TrackMeNot is a browser-extension for Firefox and Chrome that sends semi-random search requests to several search engines with the goal of disrupting this sort of tracking. Well, it's more aimed at preventing commercial entities from creating an accurate picture of your web-browsing habits, but it probably adds some noise to the intelligence gathering too. By default it pulls random keywords from newspaper headlines, but you can configure it to use (or avoid) certain keywords, as well as tweak the frequency of the requests. It runs automatically in the background whenever your browser is open.
TrackMeNot isn't really useful in hiding your behavior; it just throws in spurious data that makes legitimate data look less accurate. It's really aimed more at devaluing marketing databases with the (admittedly vain) hope that they'll give up on the whole thing ;-)
Note: it does use extra CPU cycles and bandwidth, so if you are constrained in either this tool may not be for you. Also, tweak the timing of those search requests carefully or the search engines might blacklist you as a bot. Having said that, I've been using this plug-in for several years now and it's rarely caused me any problems.
I live in the middle of the Sprawl; if I'm lucky, on a very clear night, I see 9 stars (I counted). If I drive 20 miles, I'll at least see more stars than I have fingers but I'd probably need twice that for a even a /chance/ to see the comet. And for "astronomy class", ohmigosh-the-universe-is-huge-I-need-to-go-home-and-reconsider-my-place-in-the-universe type of sky-gazing, we're talking at least a 200 mile drive to get clear of the light and pollution of the cities. And I /know/ that whatever day I set aside to make that drive, it's going to be cloudy that night.
It's a shame too. I personally think that the reason our society is becoming insular and risk-averse is that - with so many of us cloistered in cities - we no longer have the awe-inspiring panorama of the night-sky coming out every night to challenge us. Surrounded by our warrens, the universe looks conquered already, so why bother spending trillions just to poke the "rare" unexplored bit? Sometimes I half-believe our society would react like in Asimov's "Nightfall" were we all suddenly to be confronted with an unblemished night sky again.
Ummm... I hate to break it to you, but the verb form of "gift", as in "bestow a gift", dates back to the 16th century. It's not a modern or American usage; it is a long-recognized usage of the word.
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming...
Trump is still around because there is a large base of people who buy into the stuff he says.
Even more, he is still around because he sells papers (well, TV advertising). Even people who don't support him can't help but turn on the TV to see what wacky idea he has come up with today. The media knows this, so they throw him in our faces every chance they get. If he wasn't such an entertaining spectacle, the media would have dropped him months ago and he would have been stumping in half-filled halls to a dwindling number of supporters while the news focused on the other candidates (probably trying to dig up dirt on marital infidelities or contrast a candidates current policies with a statement he made in high-school).
Of course, Trump is well aware of this too, so he keeps saying ever more outrageous things just so he can keep making headlines. Not only does this feed his huge ego, it increases his visibility and makes him seem a viable candidate. Many people refuse to vote for somebody unless they think there's a chance that person can win, and with Trump in the news all the time, it makes him seem more popular than he really is (of course, eventually this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy).
Trump is one of the greatest political trolls ever, and his success is largely because the news is so addicted to advertising dollars they can't help but feed the troll.
What really terrifies me is that next election, other politicians are going to take note of Trump's success and are going to follow in his footsteps until eventually we'll end up with somebody like President Dwayne Elizondo 'Mountain Dew' Herbert Camacho.