The problem with your post is, you say nothing constructive. Just an insult.

Unless you're willing to spend 16 years to get there

Apple's recent decision to rework its latest encryption in a way that makes it almost impossible for the company to turn over data from most iPhones or iPads to police.

"Almost impossible".

They really think you're stupid.

It's interesting that this story hits Slashdot the same day as the story about Apple double-pinky swearing that they'll never, unh-uh, not ever unlock your iPhone for law enforcement any more.

I don't believe a fucking word. They'd throw a baby off a bridge for a $2 bump in their stock price. It's the same with any corporation, but they're closed ecosystem just means there's no way to protect yourself.

All this "canary" bullshit begs the question why, if Apple really cared one little bit about their customers, don't they just come out and say what they have to say. Apple may be one of a very small handful of corporations that actually could stand up to the surveillance regime. As far as I'm concerned, tacit complicity is worse than loud complicity. Especially when your selling yourself as someone who can be trusted with peoples' mobile payments and personal information and when you pretend you "Think Different". Remember the famous 1984 Apple ad? They are now part of the problem.

I have a Nexus 5 with a long boot time encryption password and a shorter unlock pin. Seems it was already fixed.

To what data are you referring? Google holds keys for some stuff like email, which is sent in plaintext anyway and which they need to offer webmail access. They claim not to have the keys to synced browser data though, and apart from some innuendo and "of course they do" you offer no evidence to the contrary.

Unlike Apple, Google can't recover your backups if you are completely locked out of your account and don't know the password. That suggests that they really don't have the key.

Besides which, local encryption on your phone is designed to frustrate thrives and other people trying to rape your phone like the police. It also makes wiping easy and effective when you want to sell it.

I'm using the example that was often cited in the 90s, you're 3 hours into your vacation and are worried you might have left the stove or coffee maker on.

Here's a radical idea: an automatic shutoff. You know, like those $10 electric water kettles have had for years that shut themselves off when they reach a boil? You could have a stove that simply shuts itself off if it fails a state check. Come on, your example sucks. A 50 cent circuit that does automatic shutoff is a hell of a lot less expensive and intrusive than giving your stove and coffee maker an IP address and having to connect to it via a cell phone. And I hope you're vacation isn't on some relaxing beach or national park where there isn't cell phone service, or you're screwed. Meanwhile, the auto-shutoff would be looking out for you even if you happen to be water skiing without your cell phone clipped to the belt of your swim trunks. Yes, your example sucks.

Otherwise you have to worry the whole time, or call somebody and beg them to visit your house

So it's easier for you to accept an "Internet of Things" and all its attendant costs and loss of privacy, than it is to make friends with a neighbor you can call and actually check on your house?
Maybe you need a different type of "connectivity" in your life, friend,.

Networked coffee makers were, of course, already decades old, though most were custom built.

I have a cheap coffeemaker from Target that turns itself off after 2 hours. Which is great because coffee only gets nasty if it sits on a heating element longer than that.

I find it... unlikely... that you truly cannot find your own examples of where information about "things" is useful to the owner of said things.

It's not about not finding examples. It's about those examples not being worth the cost in terms of money, effort or the loss of privacy. Read my post. That was the punchline: It's not worth it.

The language is very specific. Maybe they didn't get a request for bulk data, maybe they just had to provide a back door into everything so that law enforcement could serve itself. Then again, maybe not, we have no way of knowing, which makes all American company's claims that they resist the government worthless.

My phone is still an iphone 5, and likely will be for some time. However I don't find the pass code all that onerous to enter.

and Germany. And the Netherlands. And a tonne of other countries where Socialism works just fine thank you very much. What _doesn't_ work is mixing American Style right-wing Reagan-Thatcher politics in. See the UK's collapsing economy for that, or wealth inequality in the U.S. that's gone back to pre-Black Tuesday leves.

Also, there's this little think called progress. I'm too lazy to google for the Robert Reich infographic that show that productivity is up 80% since 1979 but wages are only up 8% (and that proves wages stopped growing in America in 1979). Forget all that. We're rapidly automating away just about every job. Even _China_ is replacing workers with robots. When robots are cheaper than Chinese slave labor you know you have a problem.

So, when we don't need people to work 20 hours a week let alone the 50 they're doing now (you can google the /. article on that one too) what the _heck_ do we do with 'em all. The world _doesn't_ need ditch diggers....

Of course, none of this will happen, because it requires that we create a set of standards that everyone abides by.

It won't happen because our lives have been monetized for the benefit of a very few. It won't happen because now we are the consumables. The Internet has become a tool of tracking, behavior modification and political control.

The "Internet of Things" is a solution without a problem. There is nothing about the Internet of things that could not be accomplished without the built-in violation of privacy. When are people going to figure out that a large percentage, if not the majority of all new technical "solutions" are actually methods of taking something from you, instead of providing you with some service or improvement to a product? Once you get past the novelty, it's actually quite an ugly picture. From "smartphones" to mobile payments, "connected" appliances and all the rest, it's not meant to make your life better, but to alter your relationship to your possessions in order to enrich someone who does not have your best interests at heart. It's not enough that they've turned the Internet itself from a revolutionary platform for communication and the sharing of data into a shopping mall where the product is you. Now they have to turn your very life into a terrarium for their own enrichment.

And the worst part of the Internet of Things is that it's just not worth the price, no matter the price.

Just because my phone is traveling in a vehicle, does not mean that I am driving or even IN said vehicle.

Just on Oracle employees and board members instead of HP.

You mean that the Federal Circuit actually followed Congressional intent and the statutory law (35 USC 101) -- apparently against the wishes of the Supreme Court.

Foolishness. Section 101 is broader than you give it credit for. Patent attorneys love to overlook the language.

Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.

One may very well look at the Alice patent (or any of a whole series of the business method/software cases) are realize that those claims are drawn to things that the patentees neither invented nor discovered, were not new at the time, etc. What's more Section 101 is entirely permissive "may obtain" which is hardly a requirement: shall or is entitled to, etc.

And, in any case, Congress is bounded by the Constitution's copyright clause: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." (Art. I, Sec. 8, Cl. 8). Extending patent rights to abstract ideas, general principles, etc., would arguably be unconstitutional. So, to avoid the constitutional question, it's best to resolve the broad language against that patentability.