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Comment Re:Simple. Easy. (Score 1) 113

Ugh. So incredibly inefficient. I will consume and process orders of magnitude more information in my lifetime than you will by not clinging to outdated methods of information exchange. Its great that you enjoy it, but keep in mind all of those things that you like will make your books cost significantly more and you will get less information overall due to the physical overhead.

Orders of magnitude more information? How is that possible? Few people have their reading rate limited by the time it takes to buy a book even if they buy it at a store, especially since prodigious readers tend to purchase more than one book per visit. But you somehow read at least 100 times more material than someone that buys books at a store?

I have a feeling that those that prefer to shop in a book store don't measure their reading effectiveness in "words consumed per unit time", but in enjoyment of the book, including the selection process.

Comment Re:What's the problem... (Score 1) 92

Apple's statement that its move is to "improve speed and reliability" is clearly bullshit, in light of the recent Chinese government demand that such data be stored in-country. So much is clear and obvious.

However, Apple should be given huge kudos if their claim that they store it encrypted, and that the encryption keys are offshore, is correct. If so, it's a brilliant move. Eat that, China!

how would that even work? When a user in china wants to access his data, that data is transmitted offshore to be decrypted and then the decrypted data is shipped back into China and served to the user? What would be the point of such a system?

Comment Re:Great (Score 3, Insightful) 175

I'm curious how this could decrease revenue though, because automated scanning is is where the adds come from, and your key would only be as long as effective as a pass-phrase (I assume cloud stored password protected key, with local javascript to unlock the key, and something stored on the local computer to cache the key so the pass-phrase doesn't need to be used constant).

The problem with a cloud stored key that's unlocked by JavaScript with a passphrase is that when the government wants your passphrase they'll either tell Yahoo to silently replace your JavaScript module with one that does keylogging of your passphrase, or they'll take over Yahoo's SSL certificate and inject keylogging JavaScript of their own.

Comment Re:Common sense (Score 3, Informative) 28

A good common sense opinion from Mr. Wheeler and the FCC.

I am not so sure. If the two companies co-own the spectrum, they can each use it where it is most effective. This makes it worth more to them, so they may bid more, thus paying more money to the government, and means that the spectrum should be more effectively utilized, bringing benefits to the consumer. It doesn't seem obvious to me that banning combined bidding is "common sense".

Paying more money to the government is the opposite of "benefits to the consumer" -- the billions of dollars that companies pay for spectrum aren't paid out of "free money", it's paid by consumers.

But it's clear that under the current system, if Sprint and T-Mobile aren't allowed to pool their funds for bidding, they'll be out-bid by the 2 huge duopoly providers, it's unlikely that some fresh new upstart is going to be able to come up with the funds to compete in the spectrum bidding and still have money leftover to build out the network to use it.

Comment Re:It's almost sane(really) (Score 4, Insightful) 502

OK, thought of a good counter analogy:

- You've hidden bombs on public transit all over the country, and the list of where you hid them is stored on a server in the UK; should the government be able to get a warrant for that information?

Of course they should... Through a UK court, not a USA court.

Comment Re:It's almost sane(really) (Score 1) 502

That is a completely irrelevant example. Were not talking about subpoenaing a foreign company or entity. We are talking about forcing companies operating in the US to turn over information that is in their possession (under there control).

The basic concept here is that data does not exist in the physical world. Where the electrons are is irrelevant if the entity that controls it exists in the US.

       

What if the data was in my locked briefcase in Microsoft's London office.... Do you think they should just hand it over to USA prosecutors without going through the UK's legal process?

Comment Re:It's almost sane(really) (Score 5, Interesting) 502

Going to take a position I know will be unpopular in this thread, but:

The leverage they have is that you're accused of committing a crime within the borders of the US, and evidence you have access to can be demanded under a warrant that covers details related to that crime. Their physical inability to seize it by force(because it's in another jurisdiction) is about as relevant as their inability to unlock your bank safe. Either way they can punish you for not turning over evidence that is covered by the warrant.

Is there any circumstance where you think USA prosecutors should not be allowed to force foreign entities to hand over evidence without going through that country's legal system?

Like if I'm arrested for smoking pot in the USA and USA prosecutors want to search my bedroom back home in Amsterdam to collect proof of my drug habit, you think its ok for USA police to force my parents to let them search my bedroom back home (or enter their home by force)? Even if my "crime" is only a crime in the USA?

Comment Re:A ton of BS (Score 1) 54

On board are 20 GPIOs, USB host, 16MB Flash, 64MB RAM, two Ethernet ports, on-board 802.11n and a USB host port.

I think they are referring more to the GPIOs than ethernet or USB ports when saying "with a ton of I/O to connect to anything".

I'm curious what people would want to use these GPIOs for on a router... does anyone have any real-world projects where they use them? Not just "It would be cool if it it did X", but actual real-world projects.

I'd rather have more ethernet ports on a router so I don't have to VLAN my network.

Comment Re:What's it going to take? (Score 1) 120

Well, it isn't a myth so much as an untested hypothesis. If you posted on your facebook page "Aunt Nelly is on her way to Tacoma, she's running late and not arriving until the 4th instead of the 1st" and you don't have an Aunt Nelly who has some reason to be in Tacoma that would be suspicious.

Ah, but what kind of actionable intelligence do you gain from the millions of "suspicious" posts that would be detected every day? "Ok boys, be on the lookout for something or something called Nelly on it's way to Tacoma on the 4th or 1st... oh, and here are a list of a million other things to watch out for today". This is why collecting and analyzing "everything" on everybody is the wrong thing to do -- separating out the relevant data is nearly impossible when the data collection is not targeted. Even if you can build out perfect relationship graphs that map to real-world relationships for every Facebook user to let you know when he posts something out of the ordinary, thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of new users join and accounts go dormant every day, and there have been so many password hacks that it would be trivial to take over someone's valid, but little used account. And that's only for Facebook - instead of making a facebook post, the terrorist might post a picture of a clock at Times Square on Instagram (or one of millions of other blogs and other sites) to tip off his co-conspirators.

Comment Re:What's it going to take? (Score 3, Insightful) 120

If there is evidence that somebody has smuggled a nuclear bomb into NYC, then by all means tap whatever you have to tap until the bomb is recovered.

You're perpetuating the myth that the NSA and others want us to believe -- that if only they could collect enough data from all of us, they could stop the bad guys. The problem is that the bad guys already know that someone may be listening, so when they smuggle in their nuclear bomb, they aren't going to call their contact and say "The nuclear bomb is in position, it's in Times Square and will detonate at 4am instead of 1am". Instead, they are going to post a message on Facebook that says "Aunt Nelly is on her way to Tacoma, she's running late and not arriving until the 4th instead of the 1st ".

Comment Re:Could be a different route involved for the VPN (Score 2) 398

that link is dedicated netflix and it limits them to the amount of data they send. last year super hd was for a few selected ISP's but then netflix started sending it to everyone over Level 3 and screwed up everyone's service

the point is netflix is trying to increase costs on their business partners who will then have to increase prices of their customers.

Netflix isn't trying to increase costs to ISP's, they aren't forcing data to their subscribers -- it's the ISP's customers that are already paying for broadband who are demanding high quality video to feed their 1080p (and soon, 4K) big screen TV's. What reason is there to pay for a 75mbit connection if you're not planning on using large amounts of bandwidth?

If Verizon has to charge their customers more money to provide them with the network capacity they thought they were already paying for, then that's what they should do. They shouldn't try to extract money from content providers to artificially subsidize internet connections to keep costs low -- this causes a larger barrier to entry to smaller ISP competitors that don't have the leverage to extract costs from content providers.

Comment Re:Postal is an Ideological Fanatic (Score 1) 454

Sometimes it simply breaks the incoming missile or rocket into segments or destroys its ability to follow its planned ballistic path. According to Lloyd and Postol, if the warhead isn’t destroyed the interceptor failed.

You don’t need a Ph.D. to see the immense flaw in this logic: if someone fires a missile at you and you aren’t hit that is good news.

These are unguided rockets, not cruise missiles. They aren't targeted at a person or home, they are targeted at entire neighborhoods or city regions. If a rocket is heading to a neighborhood across town and iron dome disables the rocket and forces it down in your neighborhood, is that a "win"? destroying the warhead limits the damage, but even falling rocket debris can cause injury and damage.

If the 5% figure is right then it takes around $1.6M worth of $80K interceptors to stop each $800/rocket. Is that worth to price? Does a 10kg warhead routinely cause millions of dollars of damage and/or human casualties?

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