Pi is exactly 1, if your numbering system uses base pi.

Even for intra-European flights, I've been asked to take off my shoes and belt (and my pocket watch) and waddle through the metal detector gate while I hold up my pants with my hands. It's embarrasing, and certainly seems ineffective.

Ah, but there's your problem: step #3.
You cannot expect private interests to be respected in a commercial undertaking.

I couldn't agree more. But we're not the press, so we're not allowed to form independent opinion. Or at least, that's what I've been told ...

Yes, and no. But there are other forces at work. In fact, there are a number of such projects ongoing already, and have been for years (because they can't commit the resources for a Google-style development pace, but that's another matter).

The most important point is this:
For Facebook, and just as well for Google, the users are not the customers. The users are the product.
As long as this remains the case, you can pretty much forget everything about personal privacy -- they need access to your information in order to sell it. There. It really is that simple.

That is why it is possible for an underbrush of open source projects to build a true social network --one that respects the individual-- because for these projects, ideology trumps profit. No wait, don't go away! It's a cliché, I know, but in this case it's very very important, as I'm sure you can understand if you consider it for just a moment.

As does this, you.

Have a fine day.

This.

As a fellow non-USian, one would think they'd post that information somewhere up-front, that it's not very useful outside their borders. One is left to wonder if they are designing such "user experiences" on purpose, or if they really are that dumb. Not that I am a huge Amazon customer, but still, it's plainly bad business.

How about this?

I kid, I kid. I'm far away and not really knowledgeable about these things.

That's gotta be the longest /. post someone has ever written for me.

I'm pretty sure I really can't follow how the topology of t-shirts relates to phreaking smart cards. I mean, I understand what you say about "what is a hole", in a topological sense, and also the impressiveness about us still talking to good ole Voyager, but I think it's fundamentally different from wirelessly reading an unpowered chip that is not designed for contactless transaction. Do you have a reference for this? That would be interesting. Sure, it's possible to trick everything from parking meters to voting machines, and obviously RFID and other meant-for-wireless devices, but I would expect a smart card reader to require physical contact with the pads of the chip, or at least be powered up for the duration of the "steal" -- phreaking, as it were.

On the topic of "hey customer, use this *new* tech, it's so much *easier* for you" ... not so very long ago, the official personal digital signature solution of my country changed from a straight up OCES certificate to something called, of all things, an "Easy ID" which is neither easy nor a proper signature ID, and it's surrounded by so many glaring security issues that it stopped being even remotely entertaining a looong time ago ... and yet this thing is *mandatory*, nay, the *only option*, for dealing with taxes, banks, institutions, you name it. Yuck. So I know all about "it's easier for you".

As for the CVV code, I actually make a point of memorizing it and scraping it off the card, exactly so that the pimply service attendand can't duplicate my card with a mere pencil and snippet of gum wrapper -- I've actually had store personnel tell me they "require" this information. Hilarity ensued, but I ended up walking out of the store with my desired purchase.

Thank you for your well-written posts.
I fully understand your motivation, and wish your solution (AmEx dumb-card) would be an option where I live. I just have one question: what do you do for online purchases? I'm guessing it's the usual card-number-and-expiration-date-and-three-digit-code thing, and if so, do you trust that?

Also, I'm curious about the "remote hole" and the "concept of surface area" topic, which I don't understand. How is the non-RFID chip of a standard "smart card" vulnerable? No really, I'm not playing dumb or trolling -- I'd like to learn.

I'm sorry, but this is one occasion I cannot pass up.

"The Neverhood", by Microsoft, is a hilarious and not too challenging point and click adventure which requires almost no language skills (save for a few very specific bits of knowledge, such as the meaning of "bobby"). It may me a bit hard to come by, though. :-(

I loved how the Mac OS for years and years just consisted of two files, System and Finder (while Windows needed a few hundred files on a handful of floppies).

I still keep my original floppies for Apple ANSI Pascal v1.0, Microsoft Excel v1.0, and even a beta of MS Flight Simulator and a few other things. I don't think any of the floppies are readable any longer, though, and the Pascal floppy is mounted in a display frame next to my home workstation (being that I'm a professional software developer now and that's THE floppy that got me started).

And I'll never forget the G 49D81A interrupt on the Mac SE, with those scanned-in(!) photos of the developers. So neat!

Hmm, interesting. I was just about to say "BS" because the 128K (my first Mac, too) had a floppy drive ... but it's true that we also had some instructional audio tapes. My, those were horrible, though. :-)

There are so many types of Android devices out there, developers have to factor in hardware variance anyway -- and the OS helps with that. There's no reason the same could not be done for permissions. In most cases, it wouldn't be anything a try/catch couldn't handle.

Of course, this would not mean that end users would have a new Big Stick to wave around, developers could easily pick up one of their own -- developers are free to respond to a denied permission by saying "sorry, no ads for me, no game for you". This would be a nice way to balance things out so that nobody gets screwed unless they too screwed around.