Oh but you can, and it's increasingly being done and the people being intercepted are probably completely unaware of it. All of the big providers of content filtering hardware offer SSL interception now (actually that article was written in 2006, so it's been going on for a while now). The sysadmin just has to deploy a trusted CA key to each desktop. I still think it is probably a violation of various wiretap laws because, regardless of what the local user has agreed to, the remote side (Google, your bank etc.) have not agreed to your interception of their encrypted communications. But, afaik, surprisingly nobody has yet sued over this issue.

Perhaps, but what I actually said was that Apple fans *claimed* it was higher, and they would link to some page like this as evidence ("If you look at this January 2009 data, The iPhone was actually less than half of a percentage point away from owning 70 percent of the mobile browsing market.") or "iPhone grabbed 72% of smartphone market share in Japan" or "iPad owns 96% of enterprise market and iPhone share climbs to 53%". And even now we are seeing stuff like "Apple's iPhone Has Staged A Monster Comeback, Android Is Now Dead In The Water". Yes, a platform that with almost a million phones being activated every day is apparently now "dead in the water". Those Apple marketing guys are good at getting their message broadcast.

According to this, Apples market share in 1980 was 15%. Okay, that is "huge" on the scale of all PC clones combined, but it beats out the market share of individual manufacturers like Dell and Lenovo today. This article says "In 1984, the Apple II had 15% of the market, Apple's best showing ever. (When combined with the Mac, Apple had over 20% of the market that year.)". The same page says that Apple's low point in 2001 was 2.3%. So from a high of 20% to a low of 2.3%... that's a big fall, losing 88.5% of the market, which was my real point.

He isn't retired, he is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. But he also appears have a rather profitable sideline as a (self described) professional expert witness.

I think you underestimate the seriousness of this issue to these companies. This isn't about tiny license fees. Apple is ultimately aiming for a complete sales ban on most (all?) Samsung smartphones (and then HTC). A few years ago Apple fans were proudly shouting that the iPhone had 70%+ of the smartphone market, and was growing by 200% to 300% every year. They don't talk about market share these days - now they brag about profitability - and the reason is that the iPhone market share is falling, and is down to 32%. The Samsung Galaxy phones are widely popular - UK sales data show the S2 and S3 outselling the iPhone every month except April 2012 - and if you check the "Android fragmentation" graph you will see that Galaxy devices (GT-x) alone comprise a huge proportion of the Android market.

Apple executives are terrified that what happened with the desktop market - Apple initially gaining huge market share, and then falling to below 5% - will be repeated in the phone and tablet markets. And in a completely free market, that is what would probably happen, since competitors will produce lower price products with similar capabilities and over time erode market share of the dominant manufacturer. Thus the obvious answer is to try and avoid the dangers of the free market by asking the government to stop your competitors from being so competitive.

Expert witnesses are supposed to be paid for their time - not for their testimony in itself. If the amount of money is excessive, then it suggests that what the client is really buying is the testimony itself rather than merely compensating an independent expert witness for their time. So, the question is, do you honestly think that this expert witness's time "so far" is worth $75k? How many hours work did he put in here? What is his hourly rate? He has "so far" given a testimony that (quote) "mainly verified that the Galaxy S has the same rectangular form as the iPhone along with features like black color, a display central on the front of the phone, and a lozenge-shaped speaker." Now, maybe he really did put a huge amount of time into figuring that out, or maybe his hourly rate is really high - like $5k/hour or so - but it is also possible that he is being paid to paid provide a certain viewpoint that does not actually represent independent research. (And yes, this kind of thing probably happens often in these kind of court cases, which is why it needs to be called out when it is blatant).

Why? Serious question. App Engine doesn't even lock you in that hard - there are APIs for exporting all of your data, and you can run your own App Engine cloud with an open source implementation like AppScale or TyphoonAE. Google is not hostile to these projects - they actually sponsor AppScale development. Is Microsoft sponsoring any alternative implementations of their server-side cloud software?

Perhaps Sweden does have such a law preventing the government from seeking or giving assurances regarding extradition, but this concept is certainly not universal in European legal systems. The UK government has various Memoranda of Understanding (MOU) that cover extradition to specific countries and in specific cases. Some have been famously challenged in the European Court of Human Rights (e.g. Abu Qatada) but the basis of an extradition MOU itself is a legally sound and recognised concept.

You are assuming that E.U. extradition treaties trump international treaties on the protection of embassies.

Not true. For one, they could just let him leave without arresting him - like they did with the murderer of Yvonne Fletcher. Alternatively, the Ecuadorian government could choose to assign Assange a temporary diplomatic position - this would give him the same legal status as any other diplomat, and hence diplomatic immunity, and he would be free to leave the country.

You're right - we don't really know what happened. Maybe he did it. Maybe he didn't. But the situation that led up to this point is complicated by the fact that the original prosecutor said that whatever Assange is alleged to have done wasn't a crime and he was free to leave Sweden. Also there is the issue of his alleged victim apparently no longer cooperating with the prosecution. There is the issue that she gave consent for him to continue after she asked and he confirmed that he wasn't using a condom. There is the whole issue of Interpol getting involved in what would usually be a non-Interpol matter. There is the issue that, once in Sweden, Assange could be extradited or otherwise renditioned into the hands of the U.S. government - the Swedish government has never denied that it would extradite Assange once he is back in Sweden - isn't that kind of weird? They could've ended this whole thing at any time by announcing that there would be no subsequent extradition to the US government. And yet they haven't done it.

Actually the issue of predicated consent in sexual activity is tricky and controversial - for example, in Israel it is considered rape if a woman thinks a man is Jewish and has sex with the man, but later finds out that he is a non-Jew (eg Sabbar Kashur and an unknown Israeli Air Force officer). A similar issue is prosecutions against HIV carriers who have unprotected sex but don't inform their sexual partner - is this actually rape? Most times the man will be charged with assault, but under some legal systems, yes, that would be considered rape. Is it rape if a man has sex with a woman, then she falls asleep, and he begins to have sex with her again? Technically it may be, as she is unconscious and has not affirmed her consent to sex again, and yet this happens often, even in relationships. Can a man rape his wife? Yes, obviously (though some legal systems would disagree). What about a man who has sex with his sleeping wife? Maybe.

Okay, so I just read the Bitcoin-fan objections to MintChip, and it seems it boils down to two points that they see as negatives: the currency is controlled by the Royal Canadian Mint, so they can make new digital coins, and if you can crack the secure chip then you can potentially double spend. However, these two points are what gives gives MintChip it's real world advantages: the currency is linked to a real currency and controlled by an authority that is overseen by the democratic institutions of the nation state, so it has value. Double spending is an unfortunate reality of allowing offline transactions, but in the real world being able to do offline transactions (like real cash) is very desirable.

Many encryption enthusiasts miss one important point when it comes to digital cash: security and convenience are a tradeoff, and the public will usually value convenience over security. With the right equipment, it is possible to copy and double-spend real cash. These are issues that society already has to deal with. The question is not whether it is possible to defraud digital cash - the question is whether it is worth a criminal's time to do so. A potential criminal is not going to use an electron tunnelling microscope to extract the cash from a micropayment card that is intended for payments of less than $10. Yes, it is theoretically possible, but in practice there are more profitable ways for criminals to make money.

Now, if there were an easy way to "empty" a payment card though some stupid exploit, then I can understand that being a problem, but that assumes that there is such an exploit. I would be willing to bet that a system that has been checked by the world's best cryptographers, using open protocols, would be more secure than physical cash notes. Not perfect, but more secure, and that is all we can really ask for. In the real world, it is trivially easy to steal the cash from someone's wallet. Digital cash doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be better than that.

Perhaps you (or the people who are moderating you up) would like to expand on why MintChip is bad? Instant and irrevocable digital payments with no transaction fee sounds like a step up from many of the existing micropayment systems. The fact that it is a national standard means that it is going to be much more widely adopted than anything a private company would likely achieve (see CDMA vs GSM; GSM took off globally after being legally mandated as the common standard for the European Union).

I even think the app contest is quite an interesting approach - certainly much better than the usual "contract a single company to make an app". The summary does not make it clear, but the app is merely a front-end to a MicroSD card that also contains a secure IC for digital cash functions. The contest was not to create the underlying encryption protocols, these already exist, and the security therefore does not lie in the app itself. It sounds as though the MintChip protocol itself is more secure than Visa's NFC-based Contactless Payments.

Why do you want to bomb a nation that poses no threat to your own? It would be nice if their culture shifted to one that supported gay rights, womens rights etc. but we are much more likely to achieve that by leading by example, and ensuring that minority groups are treated equally in our own nations, than we are by attempting to rule by force and bomb them into agreeing with our cultural values.

You are correct; were it not for the billions that they make every year selling oil, and the fact that they are a U.S. client state propped up by U.S. industry and military support, then it is likely the House of Saud would have been overthrown a long time ago. The alliance between the United States and the House of Saud is purely one of convenience and money - as soon as one no longer needs the other, it will go bad.

Your religion doesn't compel any such thing - it is your personal internal sense of morality that guides you. If a proof were produced that your god did not exist, would you suddenly throw away all of your morality and principles, and turn to murdering, raping and thieving? Of course not. Millions of people have been killed in the name of the world's major religions, and many more have suffered persecution because of their religious beliefs. The "peace" that we have have now is more a product of the Western world turning towards secularism than anything else; it was only 70 years ago that some Christians were busy rounding up Jews - when the leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church actually said, "Why should we not get rid of these parasites [Jews] who suck Rumanian Christian blood? It is logical and holy to react against them.". Of course it would be unacceptable for a religious leader to say something like that today, wouldn't it? Hmmm... are we really so arrogant to believe that we have evolved so far, culturally and as a species, that such thoughts are no longer possible?

It's a good job that you aren't, since your points are invalid:

1) Apple isn't suing for "stealing" - it is suing for "patent infringement". In contrast, Fidler is not claiming that Apple infringed his patents, he is merely pointing out that his tablet designs predate the iPad and yet contain the same "original patented" design features (flat touchscreen, rounded corners etc.)

2. Irrelevant, but yes, of course he does - however, Federer's designs date back 20 years (Microsoft's "Tablet PC" was 1999) - check out this video of Fidler's working tablet in 1994 - 2m45s in - that looks remarkably like an iPad. Also see History of tablet computers

3. Irrelevant since he isn't claiming patent infringement - he is claiming prior art.

4. Good question - generally experts are paid for their time in producing a report, not for testimony as such - but only a week ago Apple was caught paying $75,000 to a professional "expert witness" (seriously, this is how this man describes his profession on his own web site).

Capacitive touch screens large enough for a tablet and at a consumer-friendly price point did not exist before. Now, they do. Technological advances drive new products. Suppose a car manufacturer comes out with the first mass market popular electric car - does this mean that this car manufacturer should have a 20 year monopoly on electric cars, free market be damned?