> Google is most likely saying that they haven't figured out a GOOD way to prevent apps from just exploding when a permission that they expect to have is denied.

That is (or at least was) their excuse with regards to not allowing permission controls. However it was bullshit then and it's even more bullshit now. Not all phones/tablet have GPS and even if they do it can be off. SD cards be be ejected (time was when that was the only bulk storage), tablets don't have phone modules, etc. There are probably a very small number of things guaranteed to be available, your contacts being maybe the only one. I'd hazard that the danger for the model as they had it was that an app might write something to the fake dataset and expect it to be there on the next read. Solvable as this all is, but they aren't trying.

Anyways, it was poorly conceived and poorly implemented and I don't mind it being gone. It ignored app permissions so that it would be active even for apps that requested nothing and made it difficult to identify apps that were actually problematic. More frustrating, it was targeted only at privacy and not security, which I'd think was just as much a concern.

> Personally it doesn't make much sense for an end-user to retroactively deny permissions.

You're assuming a perfect free market where there are infinite apps and you can find one that does exactly what you need and doesn't require any excess permissions. In reality, however, there aren't that many options. Sometimes there's only one: social games, bank, etc and that app requires more permissions than you want to give. Certainly you can go without, but why am I forced to let your app do whatever it wants on my device? Yeah, it's your copyrighted app, but it's not like I'm agreeing to install a GPS in my tablet, turn it on and ensure I have signal. So why can't I simply deny access to the GPS?

Honestly, the ability to revoke permissions would be great for developers too. There is (was?) a unit conversion app out there with two versions. One had currency conversion and needed an internet connection to determine the current rate. The other lacked the currency conversion and the internet permission. If users could revoke permissions or developers could set them as optional it would have made the second version unnecessary. A great deal of apps suffer the same issue. Most permissions are intended to be little niceties: a store wants GPS to find the nearest but could use zip code, an app wants contacts to auto complete but could just fire up the builtin contacts app. So on and so forth. Forcing permissions to be all or nothing forces develops to choose between adding features and appearing like a front for the NSA.

Would you describe it as rolling on the floor howling with laughter?

I liked that the editorializing on the "British" vs "American" pronunciation proclaiming that it should, of course, be pronounced in an "English" manner.

> Human society is not ready to grant intelligent animals sentient or human status.

It's the intelligent animals that aren't ready for "human status" and sentience has nothing to do with it. The natural order of things one of 'strongest makes the rules' and that's true regardless of sentience. Humans, however, decided that constantly struggling for dominance wasn't a very efficient way of doing things and figured that if everyone played nice life could be better. The agreement to 'play nice' is human society and things like rights and freedoms are the benefits to joining in. Humans are still free to opt out and follow the natural order, but as it turns out all of the other humans together are pretty strong and more than capable of exerting dominance, usually by putting the offender in a cage.

In other words, society isn't about sentience or intelligence, it's about agreeing to a social contract. That contract puts restrictions on you beyond the natural order (e.g. you can't just beat someone up because they are weaker than you) but also gives you benefits too (e.g. people stronger than you aren't allow to beat you up). If a human doesn't (criminals) or can't (children) sign up we generally throw it in a cage or keep it as a 'pet' (usually respectively). The same is true for nonhumans, the only real difference is that society is opt-out for humans and (theoretically) opt-in for them.

This wasn't opting it; it was a farce. It's a bunch of humans trying to force some animals into an agreement with the full understanding that the animals don't understand it and will never even try to honor it. The goal basically being to change their label from 'animal' to 'criminal' (I don't think they're even trying for any stage in between) in hopes that the latter will provide some benefit that the former doesn't. If a nonhuman is willing and able to enter into the human social contract, then I honestly think there will be a place for it. Sure there will be xenophobes as there always are, but I think society as a whole would view it as an interesting and worthwhile experiment. Until that time, however, if you want animals to be treated better make that case not some nonsense personhood case.

No, he posted the full text of their response, the relevant part being:

"The advice we have been given is that unfortunately as you accepted the Terms and Conditions on your TV, your concerns would be best directed to the retailer. We understand you feel you should have been made aware of these T's and C's at the point of sale, and for obvious reasons LG are unable to pass comment on their actions."

What they're actually saying is that he agreed to the terms and conditions somehow, and it's the retailer's fault that he wasn't aware what they were / that he agreed to them. So really it's just a fancy way of saying 'our asses are covered beyond what legal action you can afford so go away'.

All well and good except for this:
"Law enforcement requests sometimes require us to preserve Snaps for a time, like when law enforcement is determining whether to issue a search warrant for Snaps"

Which pretty clearly indicates that they will log snaps for the purposes of sharing with the authorities provided the authorities have a warrant when they come to collect the data. I'd say that quite exactly is "preemptively gather[ing] information for the police", though I suppose that depends on how you're defining preemptive (i.e. before the request vs before the court order).

Now, maybe these days that's what passes for good. Often times things are logged and preserved by default, and even handed over without a warrant. However, to make an analogy, this would be like allowing a agent of the police to record your phone or copy your mail with the data being held in escrow until the warrant is signed. I expect that this comes about from the idea that the information is being copied and deleted rather than transferred as something like a letter would be. That probably opens them to valid-enough charge of destruction of evidence if they don't comply with a simple request to retain the data pending a warrant. I'd be curious if that would stick (and very concerned if it did) but regardless it's certainly a nice bit of coercion.

It's really quite bizarre. Nevermind 2 pints is a quart or 4 cups, both of which would carry more intuitive meaning than "2 pints", but they opt to provide an analogy for that when most people have no idea what a cubic foot looks like. I think it's more a comment of how reporting is going to hell than the education system. (After all, there's no evidence that the populace actually needed that 'helpful' comparison.)

Here's a thought, writers, maybe instead of a crap analogy just convert it to something useful. Google and I took less than a minute to establish that 2pint/ft^3 is:

1/2 cup per gallon
(Or a bowl of ramen per two mulch bags worth of Martian soil.)

These days they have ISO 13485. It's a lot like ISO 9001, but drops the more marketing continual improvement and customer feedback and adds additional requirement for creation of requirements, something more-or-less non existent in 9001.

So theoretically, 13485 would require you to recognize risks (e.g. fuzzing) and add mitigation (e.g. not crashing) to your requirements, which would then be tested and all the in a similar matter to 9001. I'd say that as a result it's about as good as can really be expected. The only real other steps would be for the FDA to bring in experts to verify the considered risks and possibly verify the testing, which starts to become unrealistic.

For completeness it's worth mentioning that when it comes to diagnostic software (I believe this started in the last couple years) they also require clinical trials to verify effectiveness somewhat like they do for medicine. Therefore if you write an application that, say, helps determine if someone is concussed (the case which started diagnostic software, IIRC) then you actually have to collect data for concussed and non-concussed people (verified by traditional means) and prove that it can provide a meaningful diagnosis.

The important fine print omitted by the summary (and very nearly the article; way to push the important information to the last third ya damn flamebaiters masquerading as journalists) is that they targeting apps

Now, we'll have to see how it plays out, to be sure. Certainly I think that their interest in targeting apps that interface with medial devices is a little disconcerting because it would make, say, a free/cheap pulse monitor simply impossible. However, they generally allow anything with sufficient (and reasonable) disclaimers (e.g. for research purposes only) so I'm not too concerned yet.

So while I loathe nanny state type policies and don't like everything that the FDA does, I view stuff like this to actually be rather important. Basically, think of it as a proactive enforcement of truth in advertising (vs reactive which requires a lawsuit). If I say my app diagnoses X, the FDA wants to make sure it actually does that. Coupled with the ability for the developer to avoid that by saying 'this is not approved to actually do anything' it makes for a valuable tool for consumer choice.

How does signing a post with a real name have anything in the slightest to do with standing behind what you say? From a purely logical perspective it adds nothing of value expect maybe an improved ability to make ad hominem attacks. And even if we ignore the extreme difficulty of verifying the supposed real name, real names don't even attempt to be unique. I most certainly do not stand behind things written by people who share my name and yet you have no way of distinguishing me from the author.

In short, a real name adds nothing but confusion. Now, maybe if you attach a publicly visible address to the name the you could improve upon a simple email address in terms of identification. However, chances are that the only additional standing up you'll be doing in that case is in response to getting swatted by some clown.

Personally, I'm plenty happy to "fucking stand behind" my comments in the forum where I make them. I feel no need to sign my posts "come at me (or someone with a similar name) bro".

~ Artraze on Slashdot

Your link indicates that (among other things):
1) Copyright abandonment is really only recognized in the Ninth Circuit, and remains unknown elsewhere
2) Releasing into the public domain provides no liability protection to the author
3) Copyright abandonment requires a formal, explicit statement

If you have to provide something that is nearly indistinguishable from a license, why not just provide a well established license that can not only remove all uncertainty and provide explicit terms disavowing all use of the software?

Something like the MIT License or Simplified BSD License is well established, takes only a minute to read, and achieves all the major goals of releasing into the public domain while avoiding many of the pitfalls. This whole POSS thing is ridiculous and seems to be driven by some combination of intellectual laziness, deliberate ignorance, and a desire to 'stick it to the man'. And as usual with rebellious ignorance, a whole lot of unnecessary crap occurs while 'the man' remains un-stuck-to and nothing changes.

> They cannot possibly be the owner of the copyright to VLC, shitwit.

Yeah, and no one is claiming they otherwise. They are claiming that VLC* violates their copyright on Game of Thrones.

Do they own the copyright on Game of Thrones? Yes
Has VLC been proven in a court of law to be not infringing on one their exclusive rights to Game of Thrones? No

This is therefore a totally legitimate request under then letter of the law, slimy as it may be. Ignorance and name calling doesn't change that.

*If we are being particular, they are citing a torrent page, not VLC itself. Thus your comment is even more incorrect as even if your misunderstanding was accurate they'd be claiming copyright of a page on torrentportal, not VLC.
Further, while it's not really important for this discussion, I'd point out that that detail further muddies the waters: The torrent and/or the the description may actually contain some content from Game of Thrones. I've not checked and don't care to.

> I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

See the claim:

They are alleging that VLC is violating their copyright on Game of Thrones. They own the copyright on Game of Thrones so they are in the clear. The fact that their allegation is completely off base doesn't matter.

This is actually a necessary and very unfortunate consequence of our copyright law... Because there aren't clear boundaries for what constitutes fair use and an original work, there is no ability to assert with any certainty that a given work is not derivative. Suppose that maybe that an error message in VLC contains a couple words from the show: it's legitimate (albeit in bad faith) to claim that VLC is now violating your copyright. So unfortunately without a revision to copyright law the only way to hold these people accountable for their 'mistakes' would require them to sue and have the court declare the work non-infringing. Maybe that would be better than the current, but it would undermine the whole point of takedown requests in the first place.

Yeah, but Google it reading your email to sell you stuff. That's evil.

Microsoft is reading your email to potentially arrest you; but innocent people, of course, have nothing to worry about. That's noble.

So the only hilarity here is how much better MS is at looking out for their users!

Their iris patterns weren't "information" until they were scanned.

I wouldn't be so quick to discount the MPEG-LA's claims based on Quanta vs LG.

The decision came down to the fact the LG's contract with Intel said (basically, of course):
a) Intel had an unrestricted license to produce and sell parts
b) LG did not license third parties to use those parts in combination with other parts.
Ostensibly the point was to allow Intel full ability to create parts and to collect further royalties should parts be used.

This is what backfired: the court said that because the parts were created and sold without restriction exhaustion doctrine applied.

The court did not, however, rule on restrictions and how they affect exhaustion so Mallinckrodt vs Medipartvery still stands. Basically this says that if a patent holder licenses a product and sale for a specific purpose, using that product for any other purpose constitutes a violation of the patent.

You will find that consumer cameras feature a very specific restriction of the use of their video encoder license from the MPEG-LA, so there is no reason to believe that Quanta vs LG would apply to them. Thus, I they do sue you expect that they either win or we get a landmark ruling.