What better name would you suggest for the GNU Image Manipulation Program?

GNUImage?

Or, what's the Zulu word for "Photoshop?" ; )

How is Blender (English for "food processor", referring to a 3D modeling app) any better than Ubuntu (Zulu for "humankind", referring to a Linux distribution)?

1. Artists blend colors and shapes. 2. Blenders and food processors are not the same appliance -- the former liquifies; the latter dices. 3. I agree that Ubuntu isn't a bad name.

Xfce (XForms Common Environment) used to be descriptive

Any new user: "WTF does 'common environment' mean, and why would I want one made out of 'Xforms' (whatever those are)?!"

Aside from that, you could do a lot worse than a random unpronounceable but short acronym when trying to come up with a name for something these days...

. Is forcing someone's finger onto their iPhone's sensor forcing them to reveal information under duress?

It would be no different then forcing a suspect to provide fingerprints or dna samples. They'd need a warrant for it, but they could absolutely do it.

I agree if they just forced you without a warrant, that you'd probably get it all ruled inadmissible.

Can you substantiate this? Every time somebody has said this to me and they've gone into specifics, it's been bullshit.

You know, it's good that you come to me instead of the morons you've been talking to you, because I can definitely substantiate this:

http://www.nytimes.com/interac...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04...

http://arstechnica.com/busines...

See, the reason "Silicon Valley" (meaning the tech industry) is allowed to play this game is because they're willing to let the NSA upskirt your private information and communications. And since they've already got their hand up your dress, they're going to cop a little feel for themselves, you know? So the US Government is happy, the corporations get to make a shitload of money from your private information and communications, and they get to keep playing their little tax game.

If you had a government worth a damn (like during the trust-busting era), they wouldn't allow companies like Apple to perpetrate their little willful fraud.

Now, the next time somebody tells you about Apple and the government playing footsie to protect Apple's tax advantage, I hope you won't continue to say it's bullshit.

Same here. Which anti-trust laws? Be specific.

Same here. Now when somebody asks you "Which anti-trust laws is Apple violating?" you'll be able to tell them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....

http://www.jstor.org/discover/...

See, the problem is "vertical integration". You can't control both the product, the store that sells the product, the insurance that covers the product, the consumables (media) that plays on the product and on and on down the distribution chain. Even making both the hardware and the software is arguably a violation of anti-trust. But when you start to also own the only store that sells software for the product and have a vested interest in every bit of software that runs on the product you've crossed so many lines that Apple should have been broken up into several companies long ago. Same with Microsoft and many others. They're not just over the line, they're WAY over the line. The technical term is an oligopoly. They are anti-competitive and they destroy entire markets. Oligopolies are what happen in fascist countries.

I hope you appreciate the time and energy I spend disabusing you of your notion that "it's bullshit". And I hope you enjoyed edification as much as I enjoyed providing it.

they'd need to get every ISP and VPN provider in the country to block access to it,

You make that sound hard.

If they block it from about 5 companies that'll cover most of the countries reasonable choices, and most of the remainder are just resellers of bandwidth from the big ones.

And blocking VPN providers? Why bother? Only a small fraction will bother using one. Just because people -can- get around it, doesn't mean most of them will bother trying.

Meanwhile the cable and dsl providers would probably jump for joy at at a government ordered netflix ban. It eliminates a significant competitor, and a huge source of bandwidth usage all in one fell swoop, and if anyone complains its the governments fault.

So no, your full of it, if you think netflix can just 'laugh in their faces'. It would be pretty easy for Canada to toss them out if they wanted to. Blocking access at the cross-border links, and seizing any netflix equipment in the country. I'm not in favor of any such draconian action, don't for a second think it isn't both possible and easy.

then continued on happily taking credit card payments and sending traffic to Canada.

Given they have to license content separately specifically to send it to Canada this would not make the slightest bit of sense. The ONLY content they can turn a 'blind eye' to, would be Canadian's paying from a US address/US card and funnelling traffic through a VPN. And they can only do THAT as long as its not a big enough issue to get them in trouble with the rights owners -- who will start demanding netflix blacklist VPN providers etc.

It's not Netflix fault that Canada doesn't produce any noteworthy cultural exports. Lots of other good stuff, sure, but TV and movies not so much.

Two words: "Hollywoord North" I mean seriously, Canada may not produce much worthwhile truly independent content but its been very successful at using Canadian content requirements coupled with tax incentives to create a pretty substantial tv/movie production industry where one would otherwise not exist, creating jobs, and funneling some money into Canada in the process.

Then why did they appear before the Commission at all? If they truly do not operate in Canada, then nothing the CRTC does affects them and they could blow off the whole thing with impunity.

Thanks for taking the time to explain that!

Bingo. The president is not a king.

I mean seriously read the freaking constitution people, or the wikipedia article about it. The powers of the president interms of actually DOING things is pretty light.

pardons and receive ambassadors are about all he can really do at will

veto bills (but can be overridden by congress)

make political appointments (subject to congress/senate approving them)

commander in cheif of the armed forces -- but even this is heavily restricted by congress, and something like closing a base isn't something he can do with the stroke of a pen.

etc... its really FAR more important who is in congress than who sits in the whitehouse. The only difference being that the president is one person so he makes a good figure head, while congress and the senate are shifting blobs of largely faceless politicos who despite being actually responsible for everything take almost no responsibility for their actions.

Can you think of a scenario which can be called an emergency where you would benefit from protection from malicious misinformation?

Think hard.

I disagree. I think the problem is that there are women in the workforce serving the needs of rich old bastards instead of taking care of their husband and children.

There are zero women in my workplace. I love it.

It's better than EncryptoBarn or KeyHaul.

They don't! So please, buy an iPhone! That way we can make sure you get Bono's new music. Then we know you like it, because your iPhone automatically downloaded it over your expensive cellular data plan without your authorization, er, um, I mean, you intentionally downloaded it! On purpose, because you like it! There are hundreds of millions of fans of U2 and iTunes!

Love,

Apple+Bono

Nothing inspires more confidence in a complex cryptographic system than a name like "CipherShed.'

Is the geek born with this impulse to shoot himself in the foot?

Ah. You're talking about an unsupported, undocumented trick that appears to be an exploit of a bug. Have you thought about the potential consequences when/if Apple writes this functionality out of the system?

So, no, this won't do.

Under IOS, apps aren't kept in an ordered system collection the way they are in Android. If they're on the device at all, they're somewhere on a page or within a folder, either where you put them, or where the system put them (always on a page) if you have not interfered. And finding them, if you don't know where they are, is a matter of typing the name into the search.

But -- just like Android -- you can have a lot of pages, a lot of folders, and you may or may not remember where a particular app or shortcut is located in your own personal folder/page setup. But then there is IOS search, which can find anything.

Under either OS, if you can't remember where they are, and you can't remember the name, it's down to looking around until you find them.

One of the arguments for folder organization is that if you even know the type of app it is -- for instance, if it is a photography app -- then if you're consistent at install time, you can look just in there, and it will be there, leaving you a lot fewer apps to check through until you find it.

But IOS has low limits on how many apps can be in a folder, and it doesn't allow subfolders, which seriously impacts how well you can really use them for that kind of organization. In my case, IOS's folder paradigm is insufficient to my needs. Android isn't significantly better, either.

Your Internet was defined by the dial-up modem and a multitude of clients that fromed the basis of an Internet suite and were barely one or two steps up in convenience and functionality from the BBS of 1980 and Telnet, circa 1969.