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Submission + - NSA datamining Verizon records (wired.com) 1

sgunhouse writes: Wired has a story up, originally from the Guardian apparently, about an order for Verizon to turn over 3 months worth of call data to the NSA starting back in April and ending on July 19th. While the data does not include actual subscriber names and addresses, it does include both the originating and receiving phone numbers and various other "metadata" (not including actual conversations).

Strangely, the article says the warrant was granted to the FBI and not the NSA ...

Comment Recovery? (Score 2) 397

The question is ... if the user changes their mind, how easy is it to recover.

I help out with an online forum, we get requests every day from people who requested to delete their accounts and then changed their mind. (Okay, not every day ... but too often.) This isn't something the user can do themselves, one of the administrators has to go into the backups to find the data.

Conversely, we do have a legal requirement to delete user data upon proper request, we can't just make this option unavailable.

So the option is there and is fairly hard to find (I've never used it myself and can't say how hard it is to actually use), that's the best we can do.

Comment Re:Open set it is! (Score 2) 248

I gather the comment system doesn't like all those symbols. It removed half of my reply. Let me try words ...

n! is divisible by k for all k less than or equal to n, so n! - k is divisible by k and (if k is not 1) is not prime. So n! - 1 to n! - (n + 1) are two numbers with a difference of n with no primes between them.

The result must show that for any x there are primes p and q with q > p > x and q - p less than 70 million, ...

Comment Re:Open set it is! (Score 1) 248

May. There is a trivial proof that there exist gaps larger than any given number ...

Pick any number n. Consider n! (that's "factorial", for the non-mathematicians). Now, n! - 1 might be prime (or not), but as n! is divisible by k for all k x and a prime q > p with q - p = 70 million, not that there will always be a prime within 70 million of x.

Comment Re:Choice of average (Score 1) 374

There is also something called the harmonic mean, which is more suitable as it is in fact the inverse of the mean of the inverses.

Leaving out the weighting ...

Arithmetic mean: (25 + 40)/2 = 32.50
Geometric mean: SQRT(25*40) = 31.62
Harmonic mean: (2*25*40)/(25+40) = 30.77

(rounded to 2 decimals)

Comment Meaningless permissions (Score 1) 176

As the example I'm most familiar with, let me consider the Opera Mobile web browser. Since the browser supports GetUserMedia it has to say it accesses the camera, though in reality it will ask you if the website should be allowed to access your camera if the site asks to do so (if you visit some video chat site). Likewise since they support location-aware websites, the permissions say it uses both GPS and network location data - but again, if you visit a website that wants your location (so they can tell you where their nearest physical store is, for example) the browser will ask if the website should have access to your location. The Play Store doesn't have any way of indicating that the app will ask before actually accessing this data.

And for those apps which don't offer a choice, the OS should. All browsers support 3 general settings for cookies - accept, deny (block), and ask. You should be able to say "No, I don't want this app knowing my location today" if you so choose - and still be able to allow it tomorrow. Or still run an app while denying it access to your contacts - ever. It should be part of Android (the browser shouldn't have to ask per se) or whatever OS, so that the developer doesn't have to think about it ... well, okay, an email or chat app always needs access to your contacts, so maybe they should have a "requires" and "can use" in the permissions.

Comment Computers (Score 1) 253

I've probably been in this longer than anyone - in 1986 I was working with a teacher (High School Biology) who had networked C-64s in his classroom. Of course back then the questions were all multiple choice (we couldn't give it enough intelligence to evaluate expressions), and yes he did the semester tests himself.

If used properly, there is nothing especially wrong with doing assignments or quizzes on computer. That being said, you know there is going to be a tendency to misuse them. They'll assign more work or have to handle more students, and start depending more and more on the computer ...

It's hard to imagine one grading essays except on structure (grammar, spelling, etc.) as it even tends to be hard for humans to grade essays. But then again, I'm a Math and Science guy, so what do I know.

Comment Re:So by forced, they mean chose (Score 2) 174

Remember the song Jenny (867-5309) from the '80s? At the time, dozens of people were forced to change their phone number ... though at least one business changed their TO 8675309. But then again. they didn't really have anyone named Jenny answering the phones. In fact, their answering machine message started with "Jenny's not here right now ..."

Or then again there's adaware.com which was an ADA-related programming site, as opposed to the ad-blocking program Ad-Aware (someone forgot to check whether the web address was available). After ADA-ware said who they were, they offered a link to a competing ad blocker - I guess they didn't appreciate the traffic they were getting.

There is somewhat of a lost opportunity in the fact they were getting all that attention - it's a chance to introduce themselves to new people who might not ever have heard of them. But no, they shouldn't branch out or misrepresent themselves ...

Comment Re:Legislation (Score 1) 207

"DNT fails because it leaves the fox guarding the henhouse.. The only way to get rid of web tracking is to kill the scriptable browser."
Scriptable browsers are what makes most ad-blocking features work - and all online "apps", like Gmail etc. Advertisers would love it if you killed scriptable browsers, but online services would hate it. Kill cookies (other than session cookies), sure, but not scripting.

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