Or more accurately, the NRA doesn't want killswitches on handguns because when your life or death depends on a device working as expected all the time without obstacles, it is a good idea not to have a killswitch.

Or you can take the simple-minded approach and say "all gun owners are crazy, thanks MSNBC" or you can realize that an attacker can remotely disable your gun, thus killing you.

You don't want to die, do you? So I wouldn't put a killswitch on my gun...


While we're on the topic of guns and self defense and iphone theft, here's an idea: there would be a lot less iphone theft if a lot more iphone owners were armed (with any weapon, be it a knife, a stick or a gun)

Apple IDs and passwords (especially weak ones) are not realistic defense measures against adversaries such as:
Any government,
Any organized crime outfit (think eastern Europe),
Any well-sized telecom provider,
Any well-funded police department

The premise that my killswitch is safe because only I know the password is flawed. The existence of this type of feature alone is a security vulnerability in and of itself, and it is really unfortunate, because this vulnerability is actually by design.

That's like saying "only I know that I hid my house keys under that rock, no one else will ever be able to enter my house but me" -- theoretically that could be true, but realistically, that is not true.

It sucks to be a victim, but I don't think robbery of iphones is any different than robbery of wallets and dollar bills. I wouldn't want a wallet with a spontaneous combustion feature, neither would I expect federal politicians to advocate for such a feature. So why does the iphone require this kind of attention? If you can not defend your own property, that sucks, but that doesn't entitle a victim to impose that every iphone needs a killswitch. (I would almost call that the "sore loser" argument, but I will stop short of that to avoid obvious offense.) If we truly believe in the killswitch as a crime fighting tactic, then where does it stop? Let's put killswitches in cars, houses, boats, airplanes, medical equipment, tractors, cranes, bulldozers -- or anything more than 200 dollars.

What if someone steals my designer leather pants, let's put a killswitch on that too. My bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Label? Let me put a remote activatable drain spout so in case my uncle gets a little too comfortable in my liquor cabinet I can put a quick end to that too.

Oh, and as an aside, just because I do not own a smartphone does not mean I am "trolling" by raising legitimate concerns about the killswitch phenominum. Just because you will never be able to convince me I need the luxury of a smartphone doesn't mean any arguments I make are invalid. I know all about smartphones, I have developed apps for them before -- I don't see the benefit. I am software developer and a systems administrator -- I know how computers and the internet works, I am not being a technophobe.

60+ dollars (depending on your provider, sometimes as high as 90 dollars) a months for "G4 LTE" -- yawn, I pay 50 dollars a month for faster internet out of my own home and my home computer is more capable and easier to use and costs less to replace. Anyone who thinks they need internet 24 hours a day has been duped and anyone who cries "technophobe" at smartphone holdouts is just a fanboi. There is a real world, and it is much more interesting and beautiful than any computer simulation. Those are my bussiness-sense and humanistic reasons for not wanting a smartphone, there are technical and legal reasons too. Why would I want to opt in to a federal surveillence network? No thanks, don't need that.

Find me something really special a smartphone can do and maybe I'll change my mind. To me, it is nothing more than an expensive computer, depending on your manufacturer (Apple) it may even have certain restrictions on it that any sane computer owner would simply not accept on their laptop or desktop computer. "But it's a phone man!" -- it is a computer with telephony capabilities, don't sugar feed me some bullshit about how my computer needs to be "easier to use" and therefore it must be less capable. I will not pay any amount of money for a self-crippling device, period. And the less people there are willing to defend consumer principals like this, the more likely it is that companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft will abuse their customer base with "innovations" like the killswitch and the walled-garden.

Do you believe everything you read on the internet? What combats crime is good law enforcement, not self-destructing devices. Think of all the crime that this vulnerability (yes, it is a vulnerability by it's very nature - a remote activated DOS function) enables? You trust Apple to secure this interface? Yeah right, criminals have already turned your "crime-fighting" killswitch into ransomware. I highly doubt that ransomware fits your definition of "combatting crime". Cheers,

Well this is a truly disheartening decision -- not that I own a smartphone, but the "principal" behind the move is scary indeed. What's to prevent law enforcement from arbitrarily hitting the kill switch on political dissidents? What's to prevent a criminal from hitting the kill switch on prospective victims before they can call the police? What's to stop a telecomm provider from hitting the killswitch on delinquent accounts? This move by the government to mandating killswitch technology in cellphone is an unhidden attempt to usurp even more power from the citizens in the digital age. The move of cellphone manufacturer's to voluntarily impliment such technology shows a wholesale failure to protect consumer interests. Is iphone theft really that big of a problem? A few solutions: don't use them in sketchy places -- Aside from your iphone, do you usually flaunt valuable possessions worth upwards of hundreds of dollars in public? No? So then why is your iphone the exception? Please excersize more practical thinking in public. An industry-wide solution? Stop inflating the prices of these portable computers to the point where criminals are incentivized to steal them. I can buy a better computer than the iphone for half the price, let's get real for a second, there is no credible reason why the iphone is so expensive other than Apple is greedy for the money. You want iphone thefts to decrease? Instead of arming every single iphone with a killswitch, why not lower its price? You don't believe me that the price is inflated? Have you ever stopped to wonder why smarthphones come standard with TWO cameras now? No thanks, I only need one camera at a time. If you want to inflate the price of my phone by introducing arbitrary camera enhancements, give me ONE camera which is twice as good, not TWO cameras which are just as shitty. At this rate, I will never buy a "smartphone" -- Not worth my time, not worth my money, not worth the spying, not worth the change in personality. Get real, people.

That then would be patent infringement.

Why would Square Enix allow Chrono Compendium to spend 5 years of development time on a project just to threaten legal action 18 days before release? The only really good explanation is sadism. I really wish that Chrono Compendium didn't omit the name and address of the lawyer(s) responsible for the cease and desist letter, I would have liked to have known these bastards names, perhaps we could have traced back their lineage and gained some crucial insight into what compels people to deliberately and willfully spit on the face of their fellow man. We may have discovered that they were the products of incest, that really would explain a lot. Until the names are uncensored from the cease and desist letter, I'm going to place my money on incest.

If you're implying that someday something of the "Chinese Democracy" caliber is released under the title "Duke Nukem Forever, then you are wrong, there is no hope...

we aint even on the same plane here man. Duke Nukem isn't something to trifle with, if you're putting out THE Duke title of all time, you gotta do it right, and if that means scrapping everything multiple times over a span of time larger than a decade, you do it. Some things are more important than time and money, Duke Nukem is one of these things.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm going to repent all of my sins and start frequenting a church, hopefully when I die, Duke Nukem Forever will be waiting for me on God's Commodore 64.

I hope the project lead burns the building down in a desperate effort to destroy what of the project is done. The bastardisation of Duke Nukem Forever, in my opinion, would be an unforgivable offence, and we know Take-Two's ripe to do it too.

yeah, well you can go to hell. Thank God Duke Nukem Forever was never released. If they had "competent managers" as you call them, we probably would have had a laughable pile of shit for an FPS released under the title that will forever have soiled Duke's reputation, which I foresee happening under Take-Two.

grumble grumble

You do realize, the only reason "drug lords make tens of billions of dollars each year" is because cops/politicians allow them to. This drone will not amount to anything, the only reason things like this get invented and covered in the news is so that the old folk sitting at home watching their television sets can think to themselves "we're making progress".

What would happen if we won the war on drugs? Utopian society? Politicians everywhere will have lost one of their most prized possessions and would be running around in circles trying to find the next boogie man.

You're just another one of them dangerous folk trying to stir trouble, for shame! The government has a genuine interest in our safety, I wish we had drug robots in Glorious America to protect us from the degenerate substance abusers that have so plagued our great society.

I had no idea R/C was considerred hip these days...