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Comment Re:FBI wants Google to provide user's SSN? (Score 1) 385

They would if Mr. Dears ever worked for them.
I'm not wishing to troll, I just think stranger things have happened...

Like for instance, Google asking for partial SSN's for a kid's art contest...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-bowdon/why-has-google-been-colle_b_825754.html

I think assuming there is information Google *doesn't* have is the first mistake.

Comment Re:Hashes (Score 1) 385

However, the limitation could be the delay/lock after some unsuccessful tries

That's exactly what happened

I keep my iOS devices set to wipe after 10 fails just in case I lose them. Doesn't Android have that option? Surely it must.
I'm not kidding myself that it's an industry grade wipe that will stand up to forensics, but between that and remote wipe option it makes me feel a little better about only having 4 to 8 numbers between a lock screen and most of my data.

Comment Re:Fraud (Score 1) 168

Who knows what shenanigans someone can get up to by modifying the original.

This happens now. And before. The technology doesn't matter.
Two perfectly modified copies to both appear authentic won't do either of you much good in court. If nothing else it's another great way for lawyers to get rich and get you out of a contract.

Comment Re:Obligatory xkcd (Score 3, Interesting) 372

Try adding purposefully misspelled words or bad grammar and it makes shoulder surfing hu23 sekane in the despondingly overstitch. Side effects of using passphrases like that include speaking random gibberish on occasion.

I think this is always the key point. Other than the usual 1337 to text substitutions, which are easily predictable, I have never seen or heard of a "typo dictionary" attack. At that point it diminishes to raw permutations unless you start scripting likely pairs of consonant and vowels, which would differ between languages no matter their character set (ie. Hawaiian vs. French). Even lolcat is a language of randomness, ackshuilly. ;)

Comment Re:What!? (Score 2) 267

Because the do-gooders don't trust the homeless to spend the money the "right" way, most likely.

Yet they trust them to carry what I assume is a very valuable device.
I wonder what the "going rate" will be to "swap shirts". Guaranteed we'll see these hotspot devices (and probably shirts) on eBay.

Comment Re:Tinfoil hats aside (Score 1) 222

If only that were the case. I would GLADLY pay 47 cents a week to opt out of all the tracking databases.

Except for the database that tracks you paid your 47 cents.
I wonder how much THAT data breach would be worth? ;)
You see how this goes? This is why Do Not Call registries are so much political idiocy. Canada's was and is a joke. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Do_Not_Call_List

The politicians are proposing "Don't think about elephants."
In reality it's "Best block, no be there."

Comment Re:To give away or not to give away our privacy (Score 3, Insightful) 222

I noticed from the logs that google spidered that website within minutes of me sending that email. Not much of a surprise that google would do it (although a bit chilling to see it in practice), but the problem with your approach is that not only do I need to know that Google will suck up everything I send to

I'm not sure why it's chilling either. Spidering the link immediately delivers "relevant" ads to your Gmail window right away. That is how Gmail is meant to be.

Chilling would be if your robots.txt is set to turn down spiders and they do it anyway. Chilling is when they don't play by their own rules, not the rules themselves.

Comment Re:Badges (Score 2, Funny) 186

/=\ Help an Old Lady Across the Information Superhighway /=\

"No Gramma don't click the red button... No don't click Confirm, that warning is lying to you."
"No mom it's in the menu bar. The menu. At the top. Of the screen... Just let me remote in..."
"Left-click. With the mouse. What? How big is the button? No, use the button on the top of the mouse, not the side."

I would've earned every damn one of those badges. >_

Comment Prestitials and other demands (Score 1) 477

This often seems to come up in video game development discussions.
ESRB and publishers (regardless of platform) require licensing logos, title screens, etc. all manner of prestitial things to lead into a game.

In a system with commonalities and expectations for the user-experience, title screens serve a purpose, loading screens serve a purpose, and immersion serves a purpose. For every Borderlands with it's "2K" assault on the senses, Rockstar and Bethesda games are known for autoloading right into the gameplay where we left off, and I somehow get that feeling when I boot up OSX Lion and it restores all my windows. Not that I always want those windows restored.

Yet now, with SSD drives, loading times have been brought down to nothing in some cases. Certain games put *useful* information on interstitial loading screens, and don't have a minimum time value set. We need the equivalent of a VARISLOW TSR to keep software usable as hardware speeds increase.

Starbreeze wanted The Darkness to start immediately with a story cutscene. Jonathan Blow wants to do whateverthefuck he wants the user to experience, whether the user understands it or not. I personally don't believe software should be treated like a movie, but I'm open to new mediums giving new experiences.

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