Do you think that more people record passwords via CCTV cameras and RF, or shoulder surfing? Now what happens to that number when you remove masking?

Does masking help, yes. Is it fool-proof security, no. It is a layer, and a decent one at that. The biggest issue is that it does reveal length, which really is way too much. No echo is better.

If we let lusers decide for themselves, they would choose weak passwords, write them down on post-it notes and stick them to their screens, take out full-page adds in the New York Times with them in 256 pt Arial.

Seriously, end users don't understand security. Maybe it can be an advanced setting. ;-)

Unchecked, and with low thresholds, this can make it easy for a malicious person to deny service to valid users. Blocking requests from that particular IP address is a far safer option. Introducing long delays before authentication can be attempted again could also be used.

If you think that you are adding to security by locking out users that types the password in 5 times, 10 times, or maybe even 100 times, you are fooling yourself. If you require strong passwords (e.g. 3 classes, at least 8 characters), there is no way anyone is going to do an online dictionary attempt with that few amount of tries.

Right, and when we unmask all passwords, people will just shoulder surf, much easier! No recording equipment, plausible deniability, easy to do in public places. It's a real win-win.

I'm not sure that you really thought this through.

Are the two mutually exclusive?

Pretty much any benefit that post-reproductive individuals have on the survival of their offspring (or the species in general) is a "use" for those individuals.

Including, but not limited to:
hunting
gathering
meat (cannibalism)
war
care of other offspring

Am I missing something?

SMS is limited to 160, but twitter wants to be to add a username, so they limit it to 140.

You were close.

The fact that the post was modded up as Insightful is a joke.

Oh well, it's only /.

Correction, it is about 46k (typo'd it), still not near 100k.

In NYC, rookie cops start at 43k in NYC. I know that there are more expensive places to live. Can you show me the police department that starts at 100k USD a year?

http://most-expensive.net/city-in-us
http://www.nypdrecruit.com/

Well, mash-ups and the remix culture being fast and loose with IP and copyright could be compared to how the king co-opted some parts of African American music that he had exposure to, and made it his own.

Or am I reading too much into this?

Also, last time I checked my Elvis CD collection was is my Dad's house, gathering dust. Can't really say that I am a fan, although obviously it is historic and all that jazz.

So maybe Elvis isn't everyone's Elvis.

Right, because this has never been done before....

I can't imagine such a system that is widely used today where layers were added to build out functionality, and work around various issues below in the stack, hardware issues, et cetera.

This truly is madness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_reference_model