ejr

I wish more people took a sane approach like this. I can't tell you how many times I've had to turn down - politely at first - sales from seemingly reputable companies. I find it hard to believe they would approach anything else in the organisation with that level of clumsiness.

I'd rather buy from someone who is actually willing to listen to me.

I didn't downvote you, but I imagine it has less to do with what you said and more with how you said it. NSLs as a "boogeyman" is a poor substitute for lacking evidence. So far, we know that these things are sent to US companies which are in the business of collecting and bartering data. While Apple has a corner of that market, it isn't its entirety.

So here they have snippets of our information Ex: email, credit card, home address for app purchases. However, it's just as possible to use the phone normally without downloading a single app. That leaves the SIM provider holding the bag for your information ready to be collected by the authorities. Effectively, Apple washes its hands of your data on phone calls, but there is no reason to presume lies regarding backdoors on iMessage.

Also, I'm not an "Apple fan boy". I'm just unconvinced of widespread eavesdropping at Apple and that they're willing to risk destroying such a massive advantage over Google's Hangouts platform.

I'm unclear as to what you mean by that last sentence. If someone is running a message system that is distributed and keys to encrypt and decrypt are store locally, not on the server, then why wouldn't it be secure? The message system may be anything as simple as an addressing system

Ex: Email, which is run by any number of providers, however if an email client is configured to use PGP and access is via POP/IMAP and not webmail, it's still secure as far as we know. A message system that may not be email, but still doesn't store keys on the server, still provides no way for cops to read it. Except perhaps to see some message was sent, not what the message was.

If the jurors in that area of the country have a special incentive to keep these trials going, then that should be grounds to move them elsewhere. Local businesses may be benefitting by having the increase in outside revenue due to the influx of legal teams and such.

Fair point. I'll add that carriers also selectively drop speeds for certain mobile users based on arbitrary data caps and, in some circumstances, type of phone. Ex: My Blackberry inexplicably loses speed after the first week of the billing cycle.

I think widespread 3G is making the range less of an issue now. I can see providers - third party or not - using existing cellular networks offering data-only plans that make this far more feasible.

That's a rather bleak outlook, but I don't blame you. Obviously you can't name which specific company you work in, but may I ask which sector in finance you do?

"messaging" Implies that these notices travel from A to B likely in your own network, but you added "secure". This suggests the network itself is only password protected and is a compromise - or two? - away from revealing what is being sent. The purpose of encryption is to limit the damage should eavesdropping of the network occurs.

Ex: Your routers, switches, RAID storage etc. are not immune to rootkits. However, if your message from A to B is encrypted and only decrypted locally by B, you've limited the exposure of this information.

This comment should be higher. CommonMarkup gets rid of the naming hiccup by having no direct ties to the original spec except syntax, which is arguably a dialect anyway. Atwood gets to have One Syntax to Rule Them All - I sincerely doubt Atwood wanted Yet Another Markdown as he said - and the community benefits from having the syntax ambiguity resolved by comprehensive reform.

I understand that hackers tend to be irascible often, especially online, but parting shots like these are in very poor form. Consideration and goodwill tend be diminished when you can't be graceful no matter what the other party said. Especially considering that other party was originally the impetus for this in the first place.