we already that. IF a car model has a design feature that kills the passengers such as defective seatbelts or whatnot, that is what happens. Your implication is that the use of this system as a hacking tool was accidental, and also not a case of criminal negligence.

What is more important? Intent or effect? How much if any care was taken to prevent misuse of the application in the way it was misused?

In the 80's Regan and thatcher closed the national mental health hospitals nation wide in their countries in what was called in Brittan "throw the nutter in the gutter" program. In the US of the 300,000 some patients over 150000 were dead within the year. Additionally there was a giant rash of "arsons" resulting from said patients attempting to move into unfinished building sites and starting fires to stay warm. The net economic cost was in the billions.

Was this murder? Was it criminal negligence? Was it merely "a timely cost savings" as the administration called it?

Intent and effect. Your argument is quite similar to the NRA slogan " guns dont kill people, people kill people" My favorite response to this comes from Australian comedian Jim Jefferies. feel free to google " jim jefferies gun control" for the video He's pretty funny.

<quote><p>&gt; What do Slashdot's readers think?</p><p>I think the FBI should fuck the hell off, along with the rest of the federal government. Their purpose isn't law enforcement, it's to violate our civil rights, instil fear, and keep the populace under the thumb of the elitists who run the government (for their own benefit).</p><p>Seriously, we need to disband the FBI, the DHS (as Ron Paul said, "we fought World War II without a DHS"), ATF, TSA (a bunch of dumb-fucks who couldn't hack it at McDonalds), DEA, NSA, and pretty much the rest of the federal agencies. We don't need some massive, sprawling, byzantine, corrupt bureaucracy... we just need self-government.</p></quote>

I think you're a trumper, and like most trumpers your understanding of how the government works and what the various agencies actually do is both limited and damaged by extremist propaganda.

see my post about historical precedent for further opinion.

this situation reminds me very much of that man who published a book on how to cook methamphetamine at home. the book sold so well he became a multi millionaire though he made no meth. Of course using his book, hundreds of thousands died from addiction and explosions.

was his an action of unmitigated evil for personal gain which ruined countless lives? YES

Was it technically illegal when he did it? NO

Is it reasonable to assume that anything not deemed actually specifically illegal should be accepted by society no matter how damaging it is? That appears to be the question. IMHO the answer is a resounding NO, but i am one man.

Nope. IF it was legal to drive while facetiming this would be true. There was a shoert period when it was but that was many years ago. Apple probably dropped development after it became illegal to text and drive.

The guy driving while playing with his phone was breaking the law and is solely liable. This is nothing but a nuisance lawsuit designed to extort a few bucks from apple, of which the plaintiffs will see next to zero.

You won't need it. This is a classic nuisance suit. I watched a lawsuit much like this in court once. A driver of a bobcat wasnt wearing his seatbelt when he lifted a load too high digging out a house foundation, and it fell into the foundation and he was crushed. He got absolutely nowhere.
If using the phone in such a way while driving was not illegal, they might have a case, but the driver broke the law and is solely liable. This sort of case is a 95% loser. Barring incopetence of the defense it has no chance. There is thhat 5% though. Also it will cost apple a good bit of money to win the court case which they will not get back. This case was likely taken on 33% contingency. The sleazeballs pushing it are looking for a portion of what it would cost apple to defwnd the case in a settlement. They might even get it if this was a one time affair. The problem is it isn't. Apple would have to keep on payong for every accident. There are two likely outcomes:

A. Apple offera tiny tiny settlement which is eaten almost entirely by the lawyers, screwing over the family, or

B. Apple pulls the trigger and demands a court case. It will cost them a couple hundred grand at least to puto bed, the plaintid's lawyers eat it partially because they will be desperately trying to avoid a situation where they will not only lose but also have pay apple's court costs.

So its give the family a pittance and reward the troll attourneys, or punish the attounrneys. I would really rather take B myself but it almost certainly won't happen. In the case of the bobcat thing it went to court because the plaintiff was so offended by the fact that the lawyers that talked him into it so badly screwed him that he screwed them back by excercizing his right to go to trial, forcing them to prosecite the ridiculous dog of a case and get hammered for it by the court.

If an undercover cop gets killed though it wouldn't be hard to sue facebook for wrongful death.

The thing about facebook is that what they do is sell identities. They sell information about you to people who can make money off that information. As such they want to gather as much information as possible and give you as little choice in the matter as they possibly can. It's wrong. But until companies get their noses rubbed in it they won't stop. They have the most hidden system they can legally get away with because they don't want people opting out, and they don;t care who gets hurt as long as it isn't them.

  I avoid facebook like the plague, but they probably have data on me anyway simply because people I know use it.

There's a british kid's show called "bang goes the theory" (it's awesome)that had a great little demo of what happens. Basically the ash turns to glass on the hot jet engine turbine blades. It might not be nearly as bad for piston engine planes assuming they have air filters, which is not always the case.

there's a blackhat video here (all I could find) it's the whole show. Luckily the demo is at the beginning. If someone could cut out the pertinant clip it would be cool

http://www.megavideo.com/?d=0XOVBR18

Funny that their favorite computer is the Dell Mini 9. It's not a very advanced machine, to the point that it een got discontinued once.
They brought it back though because it is very popular for the single reason that it has a reputation as being the most hackintoshable netbook there is. This implies that a lot of these netbooks are running more MacOS than linux.

The standard technique for moving such files a while was to hide the data inside pornography. They are one of the most commonly trafficked file types on the internet and people prefer not to look at it too closely. Or did before it became a standard..

I wonder what corporate genius thought this would make it more acceptable instead of less acceptable. This is like the Simpson's "can we have a pool dad" chant.

Schools in the US are funded almost entirely by local property taxes so quality can vary a lot by area. It is common for parents to choose where to live according to the quality of the local schools. Rich people can send their kids to private school, and often do. The education offered the is frequently (though not always) much better. I attended a high end private school for junior high and a public school for highschool. The difference was jaw dropping. I tested completely out of most of my freshman classes and probably some of my sophomore stuff too. I had taken algebra 1 through trigonometry by the 8th grade and there was simply no way to place me for math, so they just put me in the freshman class and I did algebra all over again. I basically took no math in high school.

Sounds like you went to a much better funded high school than I did. Must be nice. The original article is about how services like this basically don't exist anymore. Typing huh? like with typewriters? How long ago was this?

>"Most secondary schools have advanced networking equipment, multiple severs and hundreds of modern PCs, along with an IT services department."<
Sure. Much of the equipment is donated. Sometimes by the manufacturer. Apple has a huge educational program. A lot of companies will ditch machines after only 2 or 3 years. Schools also vary widely in funding. You ever attend an inner city public junior high?

>"I don't know of a computer in my college older than 5 years."<
Sure. And how much do you pay for college? Did you go to a private high school? If it's a tech school I bet they have trades equipment there too.

You're familiar with personal computer costs I'm sure. a CnC milling machine can easily cost 30k or more. The very very cheapest models still cost 3 times what a cheap computer would. Now insure it against a 16 year old. Remember it's got high speed spinning bits and if you get your hair caught it will pull your face right into the machine. Would you like to talk welding? Poisonous gas, temperatures that can make skin explode. Auto shop? Please bring an auto. Did you know it used to be common practice for there to be enough sports teams for everyone in the school to be on one? They didn't have gym at all. They had sports. Modern high school sports are a creepy last vestige of that practice. Why is it still around? Because it pays for itself. We used to pay for all of this in public schools. The US used to have one of the best public school programs in the world. We don't any more. Its getting worse every day, just as it has every day for 40 years.