I can't believe I'm defending these guys, but...

The rootkit fiasco was Sony BMG Entertainment, not Sony Pictures. Yes, they are both parts of Sony corporation but they are separate business units with separate reporting structures inside a megagiant international conglomerate. Blaming SPE for Sony BMG actions is like blaming the Department of Agriculture for the NSA's warrantless wiretapping because they are both part of the US government.

Who's hurt? I have no problem with Fox News per se and I have no problem with people who agree with Fox News. If that's what you like, that's fine, especially if you understand Fox News to be an editorial product. But it is clearly disingenuous at best when it claims to be "fair and balanced," and some people either trust Fox more than they should, or are not possessed of enough critical thinking skills to see if for what it is, which is bad for society.

I think you are equating being "popular" with being "good," and that is a pretty serious mistake. I think it's also a mistake to recognize that it may well be popular entirely because it's FUD. Many, many people - conservative Fox viewers, liberal MSNBC viewers, whatever - want someone to pick all their news for them in advance so that they don't have to encounter any news in the world that doesn't agree with their beliefs. That's their right but I think we would be less of a toxically polarized society if we listened to more two-sided views, or at least acknowledged the biases that were driving us to want to only consume a politically slanted news message.

There is nothing wrong with Fox News as a source for people who go looking to hear the news from a particular viewpoint. The problem with Fox News is that they pretend - smirkingly because they're smart enough to know the truth - that they are "fair and balanced." And some (many, actually) people who are naive or intellectually uncurious actually believe this is an even-handed depiction of reality instead of an editorialized view. This leads these people to think that everything in the world that is wrong is due to muslims, liberals or Obama (who is both). And that in turn leads to extremism and fosters ever more deep and toxic political divides.

I have no problem at all with differing viewpoints. I only have a problem with those - and this includes "news" sources across the spectrum from the New York Post to Adbusters - that are willing to actively mislead the reader in order to advance their particular editorial slant and agenda. While it may be fun as entertainment for the knowing, it is deadly poison for the health of the community as a whole for those who really believe it. Think about someone who has a 100 IQ... and then realize that half the country is dumber than that.

No, see, he was making a joke. "Dating" is a homonym, it can mean the act of establishing how old a thing is or it can mean the act of romantic courtship. And he's making a joke about how people on Slashdot might not be good at interacting with (typical) females since they tend to be so literal and have a hard time doing things like interpreting social meaning or context or...

You know what? Fuck it, you're right. He's a creationist.

How? By not going to see the movie that they aren't showing? NOMAD ERROR ERROR ERROR EXAMINE

What I don't understand is that this is supposed to be a patent cross-licensing deal between Google and Verizon, which has nothing to do with anyone else. Per the headline, does that mean that Google is a patent troll? Or is that Verizon? Or both?

I don't understand. Unless of course it's just terrible editing on Slashdot with a clickbait headline that is unrelated to the story at hand. That I would understand.

No, because the "backdoor" is getting a judge to sign a warrant for the police to wiretap you, and the police submitting that request to Verizon through official channels so that Verizon uses the keys that they have to decrypt the communication and give it to the police.

How is a third party going to use that?

What's unconstitutional about CALEA? It requires police to show probable cause and have a judge sign off on a request, just as if it were a warrant for arrest or any other search and seizure of personal records. Whether it does so in practice is a different question, but in theory the law itself is at least designed to be fully compatible with the Fourth Amendment.

NSA warrantless wiretapping? Almost certainly unconstitutional, by any reading other than Dick Cheney's. CALEA? Probably not so much.

And BTW an unconstitutional law is still a law. Not sure where you learned your legal theory. A law that's unconstitutional should in theory be overturned by the courts so that it's not a law anymore - that's how "checks and balances" work - but until such time, it is most definitely a law and entirely enforceable!

Nobody is being "backdoored" here except as required by law. The linked story summary is a troll for mentioning the NSA - it has nothing to do with them, but either the writer doesn't know what they're talking about or they just figured that would get more clicks.

Telecom providers are required to make sure that any voice service they sell is compliant with CALEA. There is no direct CALEA equivalent today for data services, interestingly - this is how far behind the times the Feds can be. And yes everything in LTE is data but for the purposes of the law, anything where you are talking - for example VoIP - is considered a voice service.

CALEA basically means that if you (the telecom) get a wiretap order - signed by a judge - from a law enforcement agency, you need to wiretap and record that user's calls for the specified time period, decrypt them if necessary, and then turn them over to the law enforcement agency. Verizon had to make this service CALEA compliant, or they couldn't have offered it. And remember that CALEA is not about mass wireless surveillance a la NSA but is actually about targeted recordings of specific individuals where there is probable cause enough to get a judge to sign off on the wiretap order. Very different things. You can dislike CALEA but you can't blame Verizon for putting in some magical backdoor - that has absolutely zero to do with the NSA - which they are required by law to have.

However for the privacy-minded it should be noted that the way things work, CALEA only applies to telecom providers. If you bought the same software from a non-telecom source (e.g. the software OEM themselves) and put it on your phone, then CALEA won't help law enforcement because Verizon wouldn't have the key to decrypt your calls with and could only turn over the encrypted stream. So if you are worried about being wiretapped by the police, don't buy your encryption service from your phone company.

I'm genuinely curious - what does Lightroom do that iPhoto on OS X doesn't? I have extensive (non-professional) photo archives in iTunes for the easy import, automatic facial recognition, ease of posting to social media etc. but if Lightroom does really awesome stuff I would certainly consider switching.

Neat idea but it misses a lot of practical problems.

Many police cars are equipped with cameras that can read via OCR your license plate (called "Automated License Plate Recognition" or ALPR) and check against a database to see if your car has been reported stolen, is reported in an Amber Alert, etc.

However, the person driving the car is a totally different issue. Let's assume that there's no requirement that you have a personal driver's license.

The officer pulls you over for speeding and he/she says, "name please?" You say "Oliver Klozoff." Without that government-issued ID you can make up any darn name you want to. That officer has no way to get you to produce your real name, even if it is Osama bin Laden and you're driving around the country touring Whataburger locations. Oliver Klozoff isn't an owner of that car? Well, your friend lent it to you for the afternoon, what's wrong with that? So without the fact that driving without a physical license is a crime, the cop has no way to figure out if you are a wanted person or not. Not a great thing for catching wanted people (see Timothy McVeigh and his traffic stop arrest after the Oklahoma City bombing for example).

On the flip side of civil liberties - the officer pulls you over for speeding and he/she takes your picture and runs it against a visual database stored by the DMV. Unfortunately, because it's nighttime and lit only by the officer's flashlight, and you grew a beard since you had your driver's license photo taken and put on some weight, you are no longer recognized as a valid driver in your state. Why not arrest you just to be sure?

You get the idea. Think of a driver's license like a form of two-factor authentication. It's not the physical card itself which is important so much as that it is a token which only you are supposed to have, which links you back to a known set of credentials at the state level which can be attached to a permission to drive, a known wants/warrants record, or so on and so forth. Just like how your physical passport isn't what is important when you enter the country - it's just a good way to get started when they scan it into a database where the real information is stored that can figure out who you are.

To me, that's part of the point. There's no amount of badgering that should make you even consider doing it. In fact, if someone is badgering you about it an you aren't reporting it to the appropriate authorities then something is wrong with your moral compass.

If you are given a US security clearance - after a significant background investigation and detailed indoctrination about exactly how important that it is that you do not tell anyone - not your wife, not your buddies, not your colleagues who don't have the same clearances - about classified material... and then someone claiming to represent a foreign power approaches you about providing classified information to them... and you even take more than half a second to say no, you should not have been in that job in the first place.

This isn't luring someone into adultery, or petty theft, or embezzling or even facilitating Marion Berry smoking crack. This is a dude straight up offering SENSITIVE US DEFENSE INFORMATION to a known frenemy (depending on who's in power this week) FOR MONEY. There is no scenario in which you are a Good Guy who just got entrapped into something you didn't really mean or didn't think was going to hurt anyone.

It's sorta like how I can be sympathetic to men whose jealous significant others hire PIs/escorts to hit on them and lure them into adultery to see if they're susceptible to cheating. But this is more like trying to bait someone into hiring a hit man to kill their wife to see if they would go for it... If you even consider it, buddy you are not a Good Guy and deserve what you get.