DoubleMalt

The bank always wins. True in Las Vegas, true in New York.

[edit=elaboration] I really wonder who buys bonds from a bank when all of this is true:

a) I can only make profit when the bank loses

b) The bank's analyst predicts that I willmake profit

There are only two possibilities:

1) The bank does not know how to earn money

2) The bank tries to screw you over

As Goldman Sachs has a pretty good track record at making money, 1) is bloody unlikely.

I think your product is a step in the right direction. But contacts are such a private matter that I think it doesn't go far enough.

People that don't trust Google are not likely to trust you.

Contacts is something you want to / should have on a computer that is totally under your control.

Given the low traffic and speed requirements, im my ideal world this world sit in a Raspberry PI like mini computer next to my router (or on my always on smartphone)

Thank you. The mail form does not seem to work anyway ;)

Well when after the last security issue there were articles calling end users for uninstalling java completely, I was pretty mad at the missing distinction between the plugin and the runtime.

But now I really think this is a good thing to recommend under windows.

I will still continue using OpenJDK for server projects under Linux, but will press for different solutions whenever installation of Jav on a Windows machine might be required.

Ars Technica lost a lot of respect with me yesterday when they stated in the analysis of Mega's security that symmetric encryption is inherently less safe than asymmetric.

Also the quoted article does not appear to show considerable insight on internet security.

Sheer directory traversal should never be considered a criminal act.

Of course if they had followed through with the stock manipulation, this would warrant criminal punishment.

Although of course stock manipulation is only punishable if you're not a bank or hedgefund which is sad.

The intent is immaterial if the actions are not against the law.

If accessing published information (and incrementing a number in an url cannot be considered breaking in ...) is against the law, there is something terribly wrong with the law.

That said if he tried to use the data to extort money from AT&T that would of course be a criminal offense (even if the "intent" was robinhoodian).

To illustrate with an analogy: If someone takes a picture of a hapless drunk girl dancing topless in a bar (AT&T), that is not criminal. If this person approaches the girl and asks for money to delete the incriminating pictures, that is extortion. If the person sells the picture to an interested third party, this might constitute the case for a civil lawsuit (see the texxxan case...)

In any case no special laws are needed for judging behaviour in the virtual world.

Tried to fill out my profile after initially only saving my email address, but the textfields don't take my input anymore ...

I stopped reading the article right there. This shows such a blatant misunderstanding of encryption that it's not even funny any more.

Electrical engineers use j instead of i to distinguish it from current (that is commonly referenced by i).

I share your concern about Carmen Ortiz' fitness for being at a position where she holds any power whatsoever over people. But your meme distracts from the real sinister elements of the system that are outlined in the article. It is a strawman argument that is easily dismissed, which is detrimental to the discussions.

The system incentivizes abuse of power and coercion of suspects. No one in the system is honestly interested in absurdly high sentences. hey are only interested in "winning", which is the main problem.

Competitiveness has its place in sport, in the economy and at hackathons.

But a trial should NEVER be a competition. I am aware that the legal system in many countries devolved to this. BUt we should not rest to attack this aspect.

To bad that libertarianism is not held in high regard here any more. I am happy to live in Vienna as it is a great city, but governmental overreach was recently demonstrated by a trial against some animal rights activist based on trumped up "terrorism" charges. And while they were acquitted with the judge stating her disgust with the police and prosecution their livelihoods were mostly ruined. I do not agree with their opinions, but they should be able to express them. (Apparently the police investigation was done after the owner of a clothing chain got annoyed by the incessant protests in front of his stores for selling fur products)

I would totally switch to Stripe if they were available in the EU. I am thankful that Paymill tries to replicate the awesomeness of Stripe.

Blasting Paymill for copying the model of Stripe is not in the same category like calling distribution of copyrighted material theft. If executed well it is a net benefit for society.

Well, of course, and I still love to play sometimes. But I would not play in any game where the stakes are high enough that I would suspect my opponent to try to pull an Ivanov.

That was said about Chess vs. Dames. And along came Deep Blue.

The problem is not that computers are better per se, but that help from computers is getting harder and harder to detect. I would more liken it to the development of doping in the endurance sports.

Having spent the majority of my teenage years studying and playing tournament level chess, too, I must say that the fact, that computers breezed by the best humans disenchanted me with the game somewhat. I would not play in a tournament where I cannot be sure that my opponents aren't more than straw men for their computers. I suspect chess is on the way down the bicycle lane, as much as it pains me to admit this.

Some people would say Ubuntu already went down this path with the automatic installation of Amazon advertising in a pretty intrusive way (imho at least)

Well ... I did my last 7 (at least) Ubuntu installs by dd'ing Ubuntu isos to a USB stick without a hitch ...

The current state of the law aside, I think there is only one justification for federal involvement in states business. That is if states violate fundamental rights of their people (Even the I would rather propose to cut them loose than to stage an intervention.) Enforcement of victimless crimes is something that congress should not have the power to mandate and the executive branch should not be allowed to do.

$100,000 is nothing, that a single fundraising call to parties interested in the freedom of information cannot collect.

I would personally be ready to donate 100$ immediately.

And then there is the example of the Wikipedia Foundation that seems to do quite well (and could incorporate this effort bringing fund raising and software engineering power to the table)

Whining about $100,000 for such a trove of information is laughable.

"Careful stewardship" is the next neighbour to censorship.

This article is so ripe with wrong facts that it is hard to accept this is not an onion article. I hope most people disabled the Java browser plugin already.

It is an abomination of ancient times (and imho worse than flash).

But the article totally neglects that Java != the Java plugin. Yes, Java has bugs and I ran into most of them being a Java developer for years now, but it still is a very solid (if clumsy and inconvenient) system to build your applications upon.

See ... very suspicious. No MAN is called Laurie. Seriously.

Sorry for your experence. WIll try to avoid MIA, as this is not the first bad story I heard from there.

I simply could not work without mosh. I do not experience significant lag and it allows me to have connections open even if I switch from WiFi over to 3G and back which is often the case.

How many gazillions is a millon? ;)

Well. Who's bug is it then ;) I'm happy to blame the mobile browsers if you used standards (was not able to get a look at the code cause on the road)

Without the intention to lessen what you did ... it's pretty laggy on my Galaxy Nexus in the default android browser.

But cool stuff indeed.

Well of course the reverse is not necessarily true.

!A => B does not imply A => !B .

However I do not think there is any valid business model out there that gives something away for free, without making money off the people that get the freebies.

Essentially even in a freemium model, free users are the product as they are marketing leads.

Accepting that your users are the product does not necessarily mean you should be a jerk to them though.

If you're not paying for the product, YOU are the product.

This is indeed an awesome explanation. And I'm regularly shocked when people do not explain Fourier Transform as generalization of Fourier Series.

This makes it quite intuitive to me (well, at least as far as FT can be intuitive ...)