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Comment Not Insecure (Score 4, Insightful) 117

The purpose of security is to prevent unauthorized people from accessing the account. There are tons of accounts that are legitimately shared, and there is nothing wrong with sharing passwords in those situations, if the account doesn't have any technical mechanism to allow for multiple users/profiles on a single account. For example bank accounts, utilities, Netflix, Hulu, wireless router administration, all have been shared accounts with my wife (some have since added profiles, but not all).

Furthermore, even with accounts that we keep separate, like email, there are useful reasons to share the password, like when my wife is away from internet at work and wants me to print a boarding pass that was emailed to her. Sure I could snoop through her email, but I don't just like I could snoop through her purse or journal, but I don't.

Comment Re:Android's annoying (Score 1) 61

This is a belated reply, but the title was "Android's annoying". Yes, if I had an iPhone, I could use Siri, and it would Just Work, because that's what shiny Apple things do. On an Android phone, it's (optionally unlock the screen, then) go to Messaging, then hit the little microphone icon that tells it you want Google to interpret some speech, then tell it what the speech is, then hit the send button, all of which require me to put on my reading glasses first (which would be a bad idea, if I were driving, which of course I'm not.)

That's not even counting the HTC-skinned version of text messaging app, which knows I want to see lots of previous call history on the screen at once, and knows I'm not going to need to do the thumb-pinch thing to make the text bigger, much less having a menu entry to let me choose font size first, but that was my old 2.0-custom-HTC-AT&T version of Android, as opposed to KitKat.

Comment Re:It's OPTIONAL! (Score 2) 232

I've seen several comments here saying "Well, I'm just CC'ing people who need to be kept in the loop!" Ok, I get that. If it's that important, why don't you just wait until they get back and give them a short briefing? If it's not that important, why did you bother sending it in the first place?

Becaused they asked me to CC them on such issues, and I don't feel like keeping a log of when everyone was gone and what happened that they might care about, so I can resend it when they get back. If it is something I care about I will talk to them when they get back. If it is something that they care about and know about then they can ask me. The problem is the stuff that they care about but don't know to ask about. Skimming an inbox full of CCs works well for that.

Comment Re:hilarious (Score 4, Interesting) 267

When Bitcoin was launched, Satoshi had only been mining for a day or so. If you had been paying attention to the right forums, you could have started mining more or less at the same time he did and in fact some people (like Hal Finney) did exactly that.

What's more, Satoshi does not appear to have dumped his coins. Nor did he engage in much pumping. Indeed once people started hyperbolically talking about how Bitcoin would bring about world peace, trying to get Wikileaks to accept it and so on he retreated into the background and eventually left. His coins are still there.

Creating something new with no built in advantage for yourself, being totally honest about it, and then when its value soars not selling ..... is pretty much the opposite of a pump and dump scheme.

Businesses

Microsoft Considered Renaming Internet Explorer To Escape Its Reputation 426

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft's Internet Explorer engineering team told a Reddit gathering that discussions about a name change have taken place and could happen again. From the article: "Microsoft has had "passionate" discussions about renaming Internet Explorer to distance the browser from its tarnished image, according to answers from members of the developer team given in a reddit Ask Me Anything session today. In spite of significant investment in the browser—with the result that Internet Explorer 11 is really quite good—many still regard the browser with contempt, soured on it by the lengthy period of neglect that came after the release of the once-dominant version 6. Microsoft has been working to court developers and get them to give the browser a second look, but the company still faces an uphill challenge."

Comment Re:Incentive Bug Finding (Score 3, Funny) 331

I guess it's time to start punishing those who are unable or unwilling to keep their computers secure.

But as most people just use the tools they're given and can't control how secure those tools are, in practice that would mean punishing computer programmers.

If you want the usage of C and C++ to be considered equivalent to suicide then this would be a great policy to bring about such a world.

Comment Re:End state and private capitalism. (Score 1, Offtopic) 331

He said universal basic income, which is certainly not high enough to allow anyone to buy anything they want. There would still be a divide between rich and poor with such a policy.

BTW I don't think basic income has ever been tried. Certainly massive nationalisation of all industries a la Soviet communism is not it.

Comment Re:Only allowed to have civilian firearms ... (Score 1) 264

At the cost of ensuring any attempt to enforce the law results in a massive and relatively even firefight that is likely to result in a whole lot more blood spilled?

Generally, sane countries want police to have a systematic advantage over criminals when it comes to basic things like weaponry and ability to drive fast. The UK is able to have a mostly disarmed police force because the population is also mostly disarmed. So you can solve it in both directions.

Comment Re:Real Problem (Score 2) 264

It's been well established that the long term fall in violent crime is primarily (or totally?) due to the removal of lead from petrol, not due to changes in any policing policies. Also, the UK has extremely strict and well enforced gun prohibition which makes it very hard to engage in violent crime, gun crimes have been falling for the last 15 years or so.

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Thus spake the master programmer: "After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

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