Yes, it is illegal to financially damage a company, and many crackers do exactly that. This article and most of the comments here argue about the tools. As hackers we find it hard to understand why a hammer could be outlawed because it is good at breaking through the windows of houses.
Why does no one talk about the network that was broken into? Why does the general public believe that crackers are so good at their job it is impossible to secure a computer system? There are two possibilities that I can see here.
1. Most cracks happen because of a less-than-perfect system administrator. Either some subtle problem with a configuration file opened up a hole for the cracker or nobody bothered securing the network to begin with.
2. Most cracks happen because crackers have found a reliable method of discovering 0day exploits or our current computing model is fundamentally insecure.
In either case, I find it unjustifiable to declare cracking an act of terrorism without spending ANY effort reflecting back on our own security. If millions of us routinely use the same password (or a easy-to-guess pattern) for all of our accounts who is the terrorist? The people who take advantage of an easy opportunity, or the people who created that opportunity in the first place?
It is well known that users are stupid, and that two-factor authentication is much harder to break than static passwords. Bruce Schneider has been saying so for at least a decade. Why have we not moved on? As a system administrator, it should be an act of terrorism to NOT make two-factor authentication the DEFAULT way of using your service.
I'd really like to know what happened to Ubuntu being supported by Dell a while ago. http://www.dell.com/ubuntu only lists one machine that you can buy with Ubuntu pre-installed.
If this had kept up, and more suppliers had joined the bandwagon, it would have been exactly the major support you are talking about. Why did things move backwards?
I think this problem was one of perception. I think too many salespeople were pushing Netbooks as "cheaper smaller computers that can do anything a desktop can except gaming", which to most people translated to "cheap and small windows install that can do simple games". But then they took it home and turned it on and saw something that wasn't windows and they got scared.
> Apple is actually moving in the direction of less lock-in as far as the consumer goes.
Do you expect that any non-Apple device will be able to use iCloud? Vendor Lock-in is what's important here, and it's definitely been made stronger by this move. Once all your data is in the cloud, do you want to go through all the effort of moving it to a different cloud (if you even can!) or do you want to cough up a few extra $100 to buy from Apple and make things easy.
Do you expect that any non-Apple device will be able to use iCloud?
Given that Apple is supporting Windows for Photo Stream and iTunes Match at least, I would say the answer is closer to yes than you are intimating here.
I hadn't heard of that thank you for pointing it out. This does make things look more optimistic. I would still define it as vendor lock-in though. The iTunes binary might be available for Windows, but Apple still claims control over your experience and your data.
While they are in control of your data, you will be faced with a question every time you upgrade your hardware. Do you want to interact with your own documents and music using a clunky interface, or do you want to use an interface that makes you feel more in control and happier?
The above question is a little contrived, but I believe that it is fairly close to the truth, Apple has always been a company based on making you feel good.
The photos and music are still stored unencrypted on your hard drives, and the metadata is embedded in those files, so no, they aren't controlling your data, any more than Dropbox does.
Do you think any Android phone, or Windows mobile, will be able to use iCloud?
Apple support Windows because there would be an uproar if Windows users bought iPods and iPhones and couldn't use them. They do the bare minimum they have to however.
> And here’s the real death blow: iMessages will be completely free.
Compared to the cost of my data plan (and the data plan that you'll have to buy to use any iOS5 device), SMS is essentially free. Google Voice provides unlimited messaging for free, all you have to do is download an app. Making iMessage free is not a death blow, and presenting it as such does nothing but imply messaging is a commodity. Not even fax machines are a commodity yet, you have plenty of choices as to which service to use and which machine to buy.
> But it’s not just that iMessages kills SMS because it’s free. It kills it because it’s better.
When I read a straightforward sentence that presents an opinion as fact I expect evidence. In this case the evidence we are given is a link to the Apple website [1] and an assurance that iMessage is "streamlined and simplified."
I've only been following HN for a few months now so this is a serious question, has TechCrunch always been so horrible at journalism?
TechCrunch does have pretty low journalistic standards, but in this case the piece's author is famous for his constant praise of nearly everything apple. Apparently there is a niche market that is served by a few blog authors of which he is one, where fans of the company congregate and seek out positive reinforcement.
This sounds reasonable. I had previously thought that only John Gruber belonged to that group. Is there anybody else you would categorize with him? I'm interested to see how other people write about Apple products.
This is one of the biggest challenges with teaching programming, everything changes incredibly quickly. If you want to write a book that people will recommend for decades, or even for years, you need to gloss over any specific technology and only talk about the concepts that will not change for quite a while.
With that said, InfoQ.com has a lot of videos that sound like what you're looking for.
Something I recently realized is that if this theory is true I have a big problem on my hands. See I love flying, and it is one of my life's goals to fly in professional competitions. However flight time in airplanes routinely cost $100 or even $300 an hour. My goal might end up costing me a few million dollars.
At the the skydiving drop zone I used to help run, almost all of our jump pilots were hired with 500-1000 hours. They were all building time to "move up" to bigger aircraft, better paying jobs, etc. Most easily were able to accumulate 500+ hours in a summer. (We flew under Part 91, which does not have a duty time limitation, so they could fly literally from sunup to sundown on a busy day.)
So really all you have to afford out of your own pocket is enough time to get your commercial certificate and be employable for flight instruction, skydiving, crop dusting, banner towing, or any of the other "entry level" pilot jobs out there.
You are absolutely correct there, once somebody has their commercial license it becomes easier and cheaper to build hours. I guess it comes down to how effective the practice is, as acrobatic maneuvers are frowned upon in most commercial settings. :P
Certainly getting your license doesn't mean you have mastered controlling the airplane, but I'd imagine that after a thousand hours of doing basic maneuvers and tightening your tolerances there's not much more you can do without buckling down and getting time in an acrobatic.
You just have to get good enough within the first few hundred (or first thousand, if you've got quite a bankroll) hours to convince someone else to subsidize you.
According to the official FAQ (http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) on-topic is defined as: "Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
Now I personally am a hacker (we'll leave the good for others to argue) and I find this interesting, if not rather humorous. This post currently has 51 points, meaning at least 50 other people also considered it interesting. If that's not strong evidence that this link belongs here please explain what is.
Do you really think it "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." ??
Honestly??
I think it's a cheap joke with no intellectual value. Some people find it funny, and they will upvote it. I'll happily believe that 50, 100, possibly 1000 people here find it funny to think about how to insult computer scientists.
After you've read it - what have you really learned?
Upvotes do not of themselves mean an item meets the guidelines.
You are, of course, correct that upvotes do not "define" what belongs in this community. However if you will not accept that evidence, look at the other comments in this thread.
I see people having fun and satisfying their creative curiosity by making and building upon jokes inspired by this link. Links which link intellect and curiosity are quite often posted to HN.
To answer your question on what have I really learned... well that's not a question you want to start asking. I can point out quite a few articles that don't belong upon HN when held against that criteria. Take for example almost everything related to the NYT. I usually don't click on those and just wait for the blog post that explains the same thing with more information and less filler.
As for another argument that you will find quite easy to strike down, this is not somewhere where I go do to market research, it is somewhere where I go to entertain myself and find things, preferably about hacking, that I may read. This link does a brilliant job of being related to hacking while also being entertaining.
> this is ... somewhere where
> I go to entertain myself
And there's the difference between my purpose for being here and yours. I entertain myself in other ways on other sites. I come here for information about hacking, startups, and things that satisfy my intellectual curiosity.
This submission does none of those. I don't think it's even especially funny or clever, but I've seen it all before.
Thank you for your reply - it has taught me something. There was a time when I would've upvoted you to show that you added value, but these days votes seem to be used mostly to express agreement or disagreement, so I'm disinclined. But I value your comment - thanks.
Well, it's not "my" community, and never has been - I've just hung around and tried to add value in accordance with the guidelines. It's been that way since PG suggested I submit something. I'm just continuing to see how much value there is, how much I can add, and gauging when it's time to move on ...
After you've read it - what have you really learned?
I've not come across the "Theorists Favor Sophistication, Experimentalists Favor Simplicity" idiom before, and thinking about those people in my life that exhibit one or the other, I see that there's a kernel of truth there.
Though the article is intended to be humourous, I've added a little bit to my understanding of the human condition by reading it. And I got a smile or two while doing so.
As a big fan of Google Wave, I like this idea a lot. Although if I remember correctly it had huge performance issues with waves that had many concurrent users. That might take a little too much tweaking to fix for it to be worth it.
Why does no one talk about the network that was broken into? Why does the general public believe that crackers are so good at their job it is impossible to secure a computer system? There are two possibilities that I can see here.
1. Most cracks happen because of a less-than-perfect system administrator. Either some subtle problem with a configuration file opened up a hole for the cracker or nobody bothered securing the network to begin with.
2. Most cracks happen because crackers have found a reliable method of discovering 0day exploits or our current computing model is fundamentally insecure.
In either case, I find it unjustifiable to declare cracking an act of terrorism without spending ANY effort reflecting back on our own security. If millions of us routinely use the same password (or a easy-to-guess pattern) for all of our accounts who is the terrorist? The people who take advantage of an easy opportunity, or the people who created that opportunity in the first place?
It is well known that users are stupid, and that two-factor authentication is much harder to break than static passwords. Bruce Schneider has been saying so for at least a decade. Why have we not moved on? As a system administrator, it should be an act of terrorism to NOT make two-factor authentication the DEFAULT way of using your service.