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Kim Dotcom Wants Money From Google, Twitter For 2-Factor Authentication 17

Posted by timothy
from the are-celebrities-necessary? dept.
Nyder writes "Kim Dotcom posted via Twitter, with a link to Torrentfreak, that he owns a security patent US6078908, titled 'Method for authorizing in data transmission systems.'" Techdirt points out that Dotcom isn't just asking for financial help: Instead, he's asking companies which use two-factor authentication "to help fund his defense, in exchange for not getting sued for the patent. He points out that his actual funds are still frozen by the DOJ and (more importantly) that his case actually matters a great deal to Google, Facebook and Twitter, because the eventual ruling will likely set a precedent that may impact them -- especially around the DMCA." Update: 05/23 14:23 GMT by T : Why is this relevant to Twitter? If you're not an active Twitter user, you might not realize that (after some well publicized twitter-account hijackings), the company is trying to regain some ground on security. Nerval's Lobster writes "Twitter is now offering two-factor authentication, a feature that could help prevent embarrassing security breaches. Twitter users interested in activating two-factor authentication will need to head over to their account settings page and click the checkbox beside 'Require a verification code when I sign in.'"

Comment: Re:I saw one of these (Score 1) 74

by K. S. Kyosuke (#43801863) Attached to: Missile Test Creates Huge Expanding Halo of Light Over Hawaii

In LA in the late 80s. I thought aliens were invading.

You know, had you actually watched Star Trek VI and the new episodes of Star Wars by the time you saw that, you would have known that an alien explosion would have made a 2D shockwave and not a spherical one. If nothing else, we can at least thank Lucas for fixing this bit of general education.

Comment: Re:Dump Fuel? (Score 1) 74

by K. S. Kyosuke (#43801819) Attached to: Missile Test Creates Huge Expanding Halo of Light Over Hawaii
But they're not actually "dumping the fuel". What they're doing is stopping the combustion process by means of an explosive decompression. It's more like stopping a campfire by opening doors into space, rather than venting a tank. The wood pile stays inside, it just stops burning. (And if the solid fuel only continues burning at a reduced rate, it can't generate any thrust anyway because there's little pressure in the chamber, and no de Laval nozzle attached to it anymore to turn it into a supersonic stream.)

Comment: Re:Wait for the retraction (Score 1) 227

I doubt this is BS, sounds authentic to me. Quantum mechanics is weird.

Well, after I had read that the double slit experiment works for such large things as buckyballs (C60), I vowed not to let myself get surprised by QM anymore. So far, I haven't faltered. :-)

Comment: Re:Wait for the retraction (Score 1) 227

The Earth is approx. 8 light-minutes from the Sun. The Sun is of course moving. If the Earth revolved around where the Sun was 8 minutes ago, it would long ago have drifted out of the solar system.

Wow, you suck at basic Newtonian relativity. How's that even possible?

Comment: Re:It's about time! (Score 5, Informative) 321

by PopeRatzo (#43799693) Attached to: Tesla Motors Repays $465M Government Loan 9 Years Early

There's a good risk of loss in many cases (see the history!)

Taken as a whole, government investments like have very rarely lost. Even in the contentious past 5 years, the government investment in emerging technologies have been very profitable, even with the poster boys like Solyndra which are used to argue that all government investment in technology is a bad idea. This argument is usually made on the Internet, which is more than a little bit ironic.

Comment: Re:It's about time! (Score 5, Insightful) 321

by PopeRatzo (#43799663) Attached to: Tesla Motors Repays $465M Government Loan 9 Years Early

Did Tesla have to pay a penalty for early repayment?

Early repayment penalties are illegal in most of the US.

The benefit of this kind of loan program is not in the interest earned, but in the fact that you get a successful company that creates jobs and pays taxes, which used to be considered a good thing. Having an additional player in a heavy industry also creates competition in a fairly consolidated sector, which also used to be considered a good thing.

These kind of government loans to business in the US go back to the 18th century, and were considered a very good idea until recently, when one of the two political parties lost its mind.

People who develop the habit of thinking of themselves as world citizens are fulfilling the first requirement of sanity in our time. -- Norman Cousins

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