How do they even know it was "Cox subscriber having IP address 24.252.149.211", as opposed to his neighbour who tapped into his WiFi?

Lest someone think this is a lame excuse, let me tell you my own experience...

The first month after I got the internet connection set up in my new place, my ISP noted my 64 gb data cap was exceeded, and they made a courtesy call to see if they could up sell me on more bandwidth. I was totally shocked, because I know my normal data usage would never come close to that limit. Somebody obviously cracked my relatively simple password and hacked into my modem. I immediately changed that to the longest password it would accept, and there has been no more data overages since. What do you suppose my WiFi was being used for? Could well have been for downloading copyrighted material, which certainly I hadn't been doing. What if the copyright police came after me for this? I would be pretty pissed off!

Agreed, except - this isn't even about people who download copyrighted material without permission. This is about allegations that people are downloading copyrighted material without permission. That's all - allegations. There was nothing proven in a court of law - just some scum bag outfit like John Steele & Co. called "Rightscorp" pointing their fingers at IP addresses that may or may not connect with people they are accusing of downloading.

Just teach them to Swype. For me it is faster than any other input method.

Who needs napkins? All you need is a good swipe from the back of your hand or your sleeve.

Hey, what's wrong with T & A?

I also think Cox should establish a reasonable handling charge for investigating and dealing with these automated complaints

Whoa - you don't want to go there! Cox treats Rightscorp's settlement notices to users as spam, which is exactly how they should be dealt with, but turns out many other ISPs are going along with this bullshit from Rightscorp. That got me thinking - why? My guess is that maybe they are getting paid - maybe in some cases, well paid. Seems logical to me that would make a good strategy for the copyright maximalists if they can show that most ISPs go along with their agenda. Then when they take an ISP like Cox to court it makes them look better. It's like Microsoft and their "Android patents" scam. They make every licensee sign an NDA so they can go around bullying other Android OEMs and tell them all these others are paying up big so they better pay up big too. In reality, in most cases we have no idea how much royalty was paid, if any.

"...this one just guides it directly towards your emmitter (and hands), which it will then presumably slice through without problems."

Yea but you would quickly learn to avoid sliding your hand up past the hilt guard. After you made a couple slips you would never make that same mistake again.

The Seduction

Imagine the world 10 or 20 tears into the future, when the IoT is becoming fully realized. Our homes and businesses have become a large network of every manner of "thing". Due to "network effects", the value of this technology and its ability to transform our lives has grown exponentially, way beyond what we could ever imagine. We are very bit as dependent on The Internet of Things as we were on the Internet of decades ago.

The Reality Today

The Internet, with all its wonders it has brought us, is out of our control. It appears there is no way to secure it. There is no end to hacks and vulnerabilities. Spam, viruses, malware, credit card breaches by the millions, military secrets stolen, loss of privacy on massive scale, DoS attacks, hacking into peoples web cams and microphones, entire systems p0wnd (Sony lately), billions upon billions of dollars in losses and damages. How can we go on like this? All the brilliant ideas of our best computer scientists to protect our computers and systems seem useless. The criminals are always one step ahead of us, no matter what we do.

If we could have predicted all the problems with the Internet as it is today, back when - would we have embraced it as we do now? It can only get worse with the IoT. Imagine when every day items start attacking you like some scene from a horror movie. It will become our worst nightmare.

We need to pause, step back, and look at the bigger picture.

Unfortunately, I have no answers. All I have are questions.

Thanks - that explanation really helps.

This app just popped up on my wife's phone, wanting to update itself. I had no idea what it is, so Googled it... "SuperSU is a Superuser management tool for rooted devices". "SuperSU Brings Better SuperUser Root Permission Management to Android" I still don't have a clue as what I would actually do with such an app. Everything I read about it just leaves me more confused. I have two questions - what is it doing on my wife's phone, that I recently did a factory reset on, and 2.) Would this app somehow allow one to control permissions of apps after installation? http://www.addictivetips.com/m... https://plus.google.com/+Chain...

Oops. That was me. It appears that clicking on the "You are posting as" check box works backwards to what is intuitive. In fact, that is a funny UI, where there is what appears to be a check box to post by your account name, and a little gear symbol to post as Anon. I would expect standard radio buttons instead of this original invention. Maybe Web UI has different conventions then software? Can't be. This UI makes no sense and is unintuitive.

From the FA: "hydrogen atoms are stripped of their electrons, leaving the positively-charged protons behind". So I wonder where they get the hydrogen atoms? Hydrogen doesn't like to exist in atomic form. It much prefers company, in the form of H2. I don't think you can have a bottle of hydrogen atoms, as opposed to hydrogen molecules. Ionizing hydrogen molecules does not break apart the molecules, I wouldn't think. Maybe the article misspoke?