I'm not saying I think they know it now, or are intentionally moving in this direction, but consider the market forces involved: Is this, Netflix's similar effort, and ISP throttling, ultimately just foreplay to getting in bed together? They have the potential to really harm each other, and that has to get through to them eventually.

Seems to me, barring common carrier or another path to true net neutrality, both sides have more to gain by colluding than by fighting. If big content and big ISPs work together, they could create a barrier to independent ISPs and content.

This is a problem with the law, not with ... Qualcomm. Fix the damned law.

I agree we should fix the law, but it absolutely is a problem with Qualcomm also, and we (especially the many network admins here who specify network hardware purchases) should hold their feet to the fire over this.

I own a software engineering consultancy. The business tax code is sufficiently vague that I could slip in all kinds of things that are not really business expenses. I do not, because I will not cheat my nation. Good people do not abuse bad laws. Those who do cheat their society are defectors and society's interests are best served when they are punished by the people for their behavior.

No quarter for legalism.

Nice post. Thank you!

As it says at the linked explanation, 2600 is not a charity, and they're not seeking donations -- but they would like you to buy the magazine (in print or Kindle form),

If you feel like buying the current issue isn't enough, and/or can't make it to NYC for the conference, they have bulk prices on back issues ($5/issue or less). I don't regularly read 2600, but I think they are an important resource for the security community.

Second paragraph on the FWD.us page:

Our outdated immigration system does not meet Americaâ(TM)s workforce needs in a global economy. We have a system that tells talented immigrants that we don't welcome their contributions. It is a system that cannot keep the United States competitive in a global economy. The time is now for Congress to act on meaningful immigration reform that boosts the American economy and does right by American families.

This is not about amnesty for illegals, this is about H1B expansion.

Sorry but I for one NEED high calorie stuff else my weight would go down too much. It is not bad food as long as you do enough to compensate with physical activity. So in my case Mc&Co are doing me a service.

False; you only covered calories. It is bad food, even if you burn it off. The amount of salt, fat, and bad cholesterol in an average McDonald's meal is unhealthy no matter what.

My specific example of Olympians also most certainly holds -- I think you would be hard pressed to find any, let alone a significant number, whose diet consists of half the ratio of McDonald's food as the average European or American.

Finally, the question is not whether it is possible to not die while eating McDonald's. Negligence really is against the law, even if you don't understand why that is good (to me, good means GDP maximizing) for our society in the long run.

You may think that spouting populist rhetoric makes you seem clever. Mostly it makes you sound as though you are as simple as the masses it is meant to sway.

If obesity is a disability, and the legal definition of maiming is to disable or disfigure, will McDonald's advertising -- particularly when it materially misleads about health issues, like their Olympics sponsorship campaigns -- be ruled negligent maiming?

Not saying it should or shouldn't -- just raising the question.

nor do they judge each other by some RINO like measure where it's a bad thing not to vote in lock step with what the party says ... working concert with the republican party and a handful of cooperative blue dog democrats.

Just made me snarf coffee all over my keyboard.

(not that I don't find the Republicans more despicable than the Democrats, but the above is still very funny)

Spidey is a stingray detector app developed by the ACLU and MIT. This page is a page to get notified when it goes live. The source code is on GitHub. It works by comparing the towers you can see at any given moment against what you've seen before and data from the OpenCellID Project.

Who watches the watchers? I do.

The police weren't interested in "criminal intrusion", they were doing what is called a welfare check.

No they weren't. I talked to my neighbor, I know what she said to the police, and I recounted my story correctly. She is a LEO also, so she knows exactly what she said to them, and exactly what their interpretation was.

Why is it an issue that your neighbors care enough about you to call the cops when they see something highly unusual taking place and want someone to check on your welfare?

It isn't. That's why I used carefully crafted language in my post that does not find fault with her or the officers who performed their duty.

At the same time, I am a very capable risk analyst, and I have made my own assessment of the value to myself of the criminal intruder check -- which is what it was despite your attempt to re-invent the narrative -- versus the sanctity of my castle. You may have different priorities, but it would be quite presumptuous of you to assume that mine are the same.

Sounds to me like you have your own axe to grind. Try reading my post again without the hate-on.

If you're staying over at my house while I'm away, the cops ask you for permission to search the place thinking it is your house, and you say yes, anything they find is admissible because they had a good faith belief they were conducting a legal search.

A while back, I left my house and accidentally left my overhead garage door open. The door that leads from my garage to my house is usually unlocked, and it was that day. When I didn't return for a couple hours, my neighbor across the street grew concerned and called the police, who came and checked my house for intruders, then closed my garage door.

All well and good in practice, as I am one of those who has nothing to hide. But I also feel strongly about my privacy. I believe that what the police did was entirely lawful, but I would prefer it not happen; knowing the crime rate in my area, I would prefer to accept the risk of criminal intrusion than the violation of privacy.

Suppose a person in such a situation posted a sign on the door from the garage to the house that said, "Notice By Owner: I do not consent to any searches of these premises for any reason." Would that change the legality of the police entering the home? If they found evidence during the search, would it be admissible? If you were going to attempt to solve the issue, how would you word the sign (or other solution)?

I understand you can't give legal advice and I am only interested to hear your unofficial opinion.

I'm a old fogey. And I welcome new programming languages. Because the existing ones suck so much. ... With PHP as the major web language? With PERL is the major scripting language?

I too am an old fogey. But I welcome new programming languages because the existing ones are so good. If we had stopped with PHP, Perl, and Python, just because they are so good at what they do, we wouldn't have Groovy, Ruby, or Clojure -- which are good in new and interesting ways.

Bring forth every language anyone wishes to invent, and let the good ones rise to the top.

Hear! Hear! And keep using the "bad" ones too, to challenge your assumptions (well, maybe not COBOL).

Some Web-based applications, including rapidly growing video services, home health monitoring and public safety apps, will demand priority access to the network,

Do health monitoring devices get priority access to electricity? Does the electric company get to decide which devices will be shut down first? Can they shut down your devices before they shut down your neighbor's, because you bought Sony instead of Samsung? Would it be good for the electric company to be allowed to negotiate priority access to electricity with the appliance manufacturers?

Net neutrality is about protecting the more important free market -- the free market in information -- by requiring the carriers to compete only on price and overall performance of their network.

"People took for granted that parents would understand [the benefits], that it was self-evident," said Michael Horn,

I'm sure they do. The benefits are self-evident. It is the people who have been advancing these programs who are lacking foresight, for not considering the costs.

The problem is not that these programs have no value, it is that the cost is large and not well understood, and that once built it is very hard to make these things go away. As a society we have not begun to seriously examine the threat of these massive databases. Recent big data research has shown us the approximate threat level: In terms of influence power, it is "very big, larger than even the researchers expected."

Just download this software, install it, and it'll work for your email client assume you're still using an email client and there's a plugin available for it, which there might not be. Otherwise you need to copy and paste and stuff, and... oh right, then there's also the whole issue of managing keys and keeping a backup copy safe. Most people don't back anything up.

The first automobiles didn't have keys, but people have learned to use and manage them. And for those keys you can't even download the management equipment, you have to go to a hardware store to get copies.

The problem is not that it is hard, the problem is that people don't realize the threat.

take iMessage's encryption for example. Do people using it know that their messages are encrypted? Probably not. Are they given a choice? No. Do they know that they're generating encryption keys? Probably not. Are they asked to manage their own encryption keys? No.

Is iMessage secure? No.