The only people surprised by Snowden's leaks were people who had a false sense of security.
... caused by a false belief in an inherent benevolence of government, compounded by this denial-apathy thing concerning the casual lies coming from every major institution and corporation on a regular basis.
If you imagine for a moment that there were aliens observing the earth, you could not blame them for refusing to initiate first contact.
I fall into that category. In fact, I'm quite proud to be part of the white noise NSA has to filter out to get at the good stuff - as long as my only foibles are those which NSA doesn't really care about, that is...
... and as long as that never changes in the future, and nothing you do today that is considered harmless enough is later perceived to be suspicious.
It wouldn't be possible to provide only a binary patch that contains just the modifications to said files? That would also infringe copyright?
That depends on how a particular judge decides to apply precedents related to Apple v. Psystar.
Considering how *ahem* clear and reasonable copyright law has always been, perhaps I can understand why someone might not be eager to do this...
You don't pay for a subscription to reward the editors. You do it because occasionally someone will say something so insightful you want to review everything else he's ever written here.
But your payment does reward the company and its staff. There is no way around that. They don't deserve it, their shoddy work hasn't earned it, and no fringe benefit of extra database access is enough to convince me otherwise.
Your value system may vary. I for one was speaking for myself.
How would [providing third-party updates to Windows XP components] be different from (i.e. less legitimate than) publishing a device driver, AV suite, or other system-level software?
Device drivers, antivirus suites, and the like don't need to replace Windows system files with fixed versions of the same code to function. Windows updates do. And because they'd be providing versions of the same (Microsoft) code without the permission of the owner of copyright in that code, they would likely infringe* Microsoft's copyright.
* Slashdot posts aren't Legal Advice(tm).
It wouldn't be possible to provide only a binary patch that contains just the modifications to said files? That would also infringe copyright?
"As Whoever57 pointed out, there are some who will still get support for Microsoft Windows XP pointed out, there are some who will still get support for Microsoft Windows XP — the 'haves'
what on earth does that sentence mean? this is even worse than Timothy's earlier oversight of re-running the same article less than a week after its first run. we know slashdot doesn't pay editors to edit, but could they at least show enough pride in their job to read what they post?
This kind of poor quality work is what long ago dissuaded me from ever paying for a Slashdot subscription. I block ads, too, since before my karma level gave me the option of having Slashdot do it for me. That was all before Malda sold out to Dice Holdings. It's not improved since.
Seriously? Nobody even bothered to read the first sentence of the submission?
Apparently lots of people did and are also griping about it. Are Slashdot "editors" capable of feeling embarassment?
Back to the discussion...
Since Microsoft clearly intends to create a disparity, there will certainly be those who defy it. What will Microsoft do to prevent bootleg patches of XP from being sold to the unwashed masses? How will they stop China from supporting 100 million bootleg XP users? And how easily will it be to crack Microsoft's controls? How big will the Windows XP patch market be?
Unless these third-party patch vendors are claiming to be Microsoft then they're not in any way "bootleg". If Microsoft no longer wants to do this but someone else does, what's the problem? How would this be different from (i.e. less legitimate than) publishing a device driver, AV suite, or other system-level software?
Do the submitter and "editor" not understand what the word "bootleg" means, or is there a real problem here I'm just not seeing?
Of course Obama has pushed EOs further then any of his predecessors. He has directly modified obamacare without any legal basis. Gonna suck for the Ds when the shoe is on the other foot.
Yes I am sure they'll put on a nice show and make a phony speech or two against it. Truth is, the corporate sponsors, bankers, and financiers who own both parties will be pleased and they're the ones who matter.
There's plenty of sites that require you to give them CC info even when they're (supposedly) not charging you for anything. Often claimed to be a form of adult verification (and thus unsurprisingly mostly a tactic of adult sites) which is absolutely stupid since you can get a CC well before 18 in many jurisdictions so on top of being invasive and probably untrustworthy, it couldn't possibly even accomplish the claimed purpose.
I'm ignorant about the back-end of credit card systems, so this raises a couple of questions for me.
While you can get a CC under the age of 18, doesn't the credit card issuer have information like your date of birth? Can merchants request this information if they can uniquely identify the account (by the CC number and expiration date, say)?
Or is the whole thing complete bullshit?
Your seething hated of Google is noted. And noted. And noted...
This article is about Facebook. Quit trying to change the subject.
It often happens in a conversation about one thing, particularly a complex and nuanced thing, that it will bring up other similar things because they are related in some way. The resistance of some to this natural conversational process never made much sense.
I could speculate that you have a loyalty to Google that you cannot realistically expect them to reciprocate (you do know that, right?), except I've seen lots of people display this tendency who obviously had no such motivation. Some people just like to complain.
The panopticion is comming. all intelligent humans with a realistic view KNOW it's comming.
A person who merely possesses a high IQ is not actually intelligent, not until they learn how to make accurate observations and call things what they are.
"Garbage in, garbage out" still applies to even the finest reasoning process.
Saying there is no conspiracy involved generally leads people to believe there is one.
Aaw man, I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't aren't I?
Okay look, Google is a company that scares the bejesus out of me, and I believe the things they develop and invest in lead the world to a dangerously slippery slope. I also think they don't publicize all the things they do because they believe people aren't ready to hear what they have in store for them. But I *emphatically* don't believe there is ANY conspiracy involved.
If you want a real conspiracy theory take a very close look at how precisely Google received its initial start-up money and what government agency was involved. It's not really so absurd to posit that the government makes "investments" in things it believes will serve its interests just like businesses do.
And if you want Google search without Google tracking, try using Startpage. They conduct Google searches on your behalf and act as a proxy.
he wants a global way of configuring which applications have the capability to connect to what servers or open what ports. This is a different meaning of 'firewall' than is used in the Unix world.
AFAIK there's already some capability enforcement prohibiting some programs from accessing the Internet in modern Linux distributions, but, I don't really know how it's configured either.
I simply use an alternate user to arrange this. In my case, it's the Windows games I run via Wine. I don't trust them and I have no need for single-player games to connect to remote servers.
So I create a user named "winegames". I run all Windows games as this user. Then I add a simple iptables rule:
iptables -A OUTPUT --match owner --uid-owner winegames -j REJECT
Now nothing run as "winegames" can connect anywhere. A few games will briefly complain that they can't connect to the server so that people who don't care can see my in-game achievements but that's alright. Also, I use REJECT instead of DROP so that the programs get an instant error when they try to connect. If you use DROP they will waste a lot of time waiting for a response that will never come.
Incidentally, if your distro does not provide this, you will need to add a line to your PAM config to allow alternate users to open windows on your X display. For my distro (Gentoo) the file is
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things. -- Doug Gwyn
