Month: March 2012

Essays: Economist Debates: Airport Security – Schneier on Security

The current TSA measures create an even greater harm: loss of liberty. Airports are effectively rights-free zones. Security officers have enormous power over you as a passenger. You have limited rights to refuse a search. Your possessions can be confiscated. You cannot make jokes, or wear clothing, that airport security does not approve of. You cannot travel anonymously. (Remember when we would mock Soviet-style “show me your papers” societies? That we’ve become inured to the very practice is a harm.) And if you’re on a certain secret list, you cannot fly, and you enter a Kafkaesque world where you cannot face your accuser, protest your innocence, clear your name, or even get confirmation from the government that someone, somewhere, has judged you guilty. These police powers would be illegal anywhere but in an airport, and we are all harmed — individually and collectively — by their existence.

Source: Essays: Economist Debates: Airport Security – Schneier on Security

RE: Economist Debates: Airport Security

The Advertising Industry’s Definition of ‘Do Not Track’ Doesn’t Make Sense – The Atlantic

Do Not Track should mean what users think it does: that data, by and large, will not be collected.

61 percent of people expect that clicking a Do Not Track button should shut off *all* data collection. Only 7 percent of people expected that websites could collect the same data before and after clicking a ‘Do Not Track’ button. That is to say, 93 percent of people do not understand the [advertising] industry’s definition of [Do Not Track].

Source: The Advertising Industry’s Definition of ‘Do Not Track’ Doesn’t Make Sense – The Atlantic

Oh, That “Pull To Refresh” Thing In iOS? Yeah, Twitter Has A Patent App On That | TechCrunch

This is why patents are becoming (or have become) just stupid:

Yep, Twitter is trying to patent “pull to refresh.” But the patent app doesn’t stop there – it goes after anything that issues a command on pulling down a menu.

Source: Oh, That “Pull To Refresh” Thing In iOS? Yeah, Twitter Has A Patent App On That | TechCrunch

 

The part that really aggravates me is how any fool could replicate what they did, and would have in short order with or without an example. That is not a patentable discovery and the people in the patent offices should be ashamed of their ignorance of simple abstraction and their culpability in strangling the innovation they are supposed to be serving by protecting the truly revolutionary which no one would ever have come up with but for the permission of the genius who invented it also explaining its inner workings.

Should Apple Make The iPad User-Serviceable? Nope, That’s Anti-Consumer | TechCrunch

The very nature of this new world demands products are replaced rather than put on life support. Without the quick purchase turnaround time, the innovation cycle will slow and perhaps cause the fast growing movement to collapse altogether.

Yes, I just suggested that if Apple made the iPad user-serviceable, tablets could fail.

Innovation is fueled by profits. Without profits, companies cannot invest into research and development. If you do not buy a new tablet every several years, these profits will dwindle and cause innovation to slow. Companies like Apple do not make money on servicing products. Money is only made when they sell you a new product. For better or worse, this is the way of the consumer electronics world.

Source: Should Apple Make The iPad User-Serviceable? Nope, That’s Anti-Consumer | TechCrunch