But security is hard. {sigh}

They don't need direct access. Actually, your CC data is suppose to be kept away from the Internet. That's what private circuits are for. In the case of a major retailer like Target, they should be doing all financial transfers over private circuits, with no Internet access.

Someone may have decided it would be cheaper to share the circuit with Internet access. That was *very* dumb of them.

I thought PCI Compliance was supposed to take care of that per defining the standards in network security for POS (Point of Sales) systems?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_Card_Industry_Data_Security_Standard

So, invalidate and reissue on the behalf of Ulbricht, and any other bitcoins that were confiscated. That would actually be nice. The ultimate in theft prevention.

Imagine, if someone steals your (real world) wallet. You invalidate all the cash in it, and issue new cash.

Unfortunately, I can see the *huge* number of reasons why it's a bad idea. The first being, I do a high dollar transaction. I get the physical product. I complain that it never arrived, and 51% agree that I'm a good guy. Now the seller is out the funds, and the product.

So does this plan go for only funds seized in high profile cases? If the feds didn't say they seized the funds publicly, would they get to keep the them, and screw the accused? Who do you believe for deciding, the holder of the bitcoins, or the media?

Hi.

the Nyquist limit of the audio sampling hardware of a cell phone over instruction rate of a modern CPU is a pretty small fraction.

The "audio" in question is most likely all below 24 kHz, that being the Nyquist limit for the 48 kHz sampling hardware, unless it happens that some phones can actually sample faster, and have microphones that can respond to higher frequencies.

The instruction rate of the CPUs in question is many times that frequency.

It doesn't sound likely.

Using multiple cores turns out to help the attack (by shifting down the signal frequencies).

Say what? Through what mechanism would multiple cores shift down the frequency? And what about parallel instruction streams contributing to noise?

TEMPEST was a details-secret government requirement meant to defeat means of eavesdropping on classified computer data from its electromagnetic emissions. I guess they need to include audio too.

My impression is that the noise comes from the power supply, not the CPU. I can certainly hear it with some computers, and it is related to work on the video card in my experience. I'm astonished that you can actually pull data from that, and in fact I'd like to see independent confirmation before I believe it.

Another five million man-years of labor gets thrown overboard and the Apple developers start again.

No wonder programmers prefer Linux. (And no wonder all apps suck) At least there they can write programs that do something useful instead of untangling a new, buggy graphics API every 18 months.

Writing code for proprietary platforms is like being a structural engineer in a world where the laws of physics and geometry change on a regular basis. It makes no economic sense to build anything larger than a grass hut.

A few more direct from China:

http://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product_en&CatId=&SearchText=7+inch+tablet

Mostly these are bulk sales only, but a few will sell individual units. (And I don't know what shipping from China costs, but I've bought small electronics, phone chargers and the like, from Hong Kong that were under $5 =including= shipping.)

BTW according to inside info from Apple, as of a couple years ago the actual cost to make an iPad in China was $38. (And would have been all of $6 more if made in USA.)

I don't doubt there have always been the occasional tamed and made-a-pet cat, more or fewer depending on the culture (as someone pointed out re ancient Egypt). But on the whole, you're right -- in fact it's only been the last 50 years or so in the American farming midwest that more than the occasional kitten was made into a pet. The vast majority worked for a living, in the barns and fields, and unless tamed young, yeah, they're NOT pets, nor can most be made into pets later.

Conversely, most dogs that are not handled young still act like dogs, not like wolves.

Back about 1980 I had one that spent all day every day hunting gophers, and was so good at it that he completely exterminated them within about half a mile of my rural house, and so thoroughly that after the cat died, it was a good three years before I saw another gopher. (Prior to this cat, they'd been thick as plague.)

Conversely, once I came home after being gone for a week, and here's three lazy cats in the house watching a mouse sitting in the middle of the floor, but none could be arsed to get off their comfy couch... and all the cat food was in the kitchen drawers, where it had been stashed by mice in my absence. Two of these were good hunters outdoors, but apparently indoor mice were 'pets'.