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Comment: Re:No more Gotcha! patent suits (Score 1) 116

"The purpose was" is now irrelevant. The patent law now serves the interests of those who own the government just as they wish it to be.

Stating the purpose is hugely relevant in terms of educating many who do not know. You're correct to state that that patent law is currently abused in ways directly contrary to the motivations of its creators. You're very incorrect to imply that educating people about this travesty is meaningless.

Comment: Re:Honest question... (Score 1) 331

All it takes is you wearing some kind of odd underwear or ... hell, whatever. Freak accidents happen. You slip, try to steady yourself with the table, knock it over, trip the cupboard with all the cake... you get the idea. How long 'til it's a meme?

I feel like the above pretty much captures the essence of the Harlem Shake video phenomenon.

Comment: Re:How do admins keep salts secure? (Score 2) 80

by sacrilicious (#43565857) Attached to: LivingSocial Hacked: 50 Million Users Exposed

The salt's actual job is not to prevent a hacker from breaking that user's password, but to prevent the hacker from being able to break all the passwords at once.

That may be *part* of a salt's usefulness. Another possibly bigger part is to prevent rainbow table attacks, i.e. making it so a cracker can't just take a precomputed list of hashes of common passwords and match them to what's in the database.

Comment: Re:Why are you still surprised by this? (Score 1) 176

Hmmm... why are you still surprised that people are disappointed at breaches of what should be common decency? I assume from your post you've seen such reactions before.. so your surprise at people's good nature and consequent expectations shouldn't be commentworthy anymore... just sayin'...

Comment: Re:That sounds like a neutral and unbiased summary (Score 1) 318

by sacrilicious (#43341039) Attached to: Google Glass and Surveillance Culture

With glass you have to announce, out-loud, that you are recording.

F*ck... so much for my plan to wear google glasses inside a brothel...

Me: Yes, I'm ready for my session now.
Her: Ok... hmmm, you still have your glasses on?
Me: Yeah, I just like to be able to see well.
Her: Uh, ok.
(we get busy)
Me: Ok glass, take a picture. Ok glass, take a picture. Ok glass, take a picture.
Her: Who are you talking to?
Me: Nobody, baby!

Comment: Here's one idea (Score 1) 259

by sacrilicious (#43330973) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How To Stay Ahead of Phone Tracking ?
Write (or wait for someone like me to write) software for your phone that has the following modes:
  • *Disabled. Phone behaves as normal. This is the mode to have it in when you're carrying your phone around and -- for whatever reasons -- you don't care about being tracked that particular day.
  • *Enabled. In this mode you leave your phone at home, or at your office, or in the possession of some friend. In this mode, your phone will responds to all incoming calls and texts by optionally either sending text messages to some other number, or emails to an account, or posting info on a website (or some combination thereof).

Example use cases:

  • *Alice is running this software, and has left her phone at home. Bob calls Alice, gets her voicemail, leaves a message. Alice's phone sends Alice an email (optionally encrypted) which contains the number from which she was called. Alice dials into her voicemail using her office phone system, then dials Bob back from that same office phone and continues talking with him.
  • *Alice gets a text from Bob. Alice's phone sends email to Alice with the text message (optionally scrambled/encrypted), or relays the text message to an anonymous disposable phone Alice is carrying (again optionally scrambled). Alice either calls Bob from her anon phone or some desk phone, or text him back from her anon phone, or texts her home cell phone (the one at home running the software) with a response for Bob, which the home phone then texts onwards to Bob.
  • *Midday, Alice decides she's like calls to ring through to her desk phone. She sends a text to her cell at home instructing it to switch modes so that it now forwards calls to her desk phone. Alternate ways of informing the home cellphone of the need to switch modes could include posting key info on a web that the home phone polls, or sending an email that the home phone pays attention to.

And *poof*... you are off the grid.

Comment: Re:Good (Score 1) 459

I could make the same argument for randomly trying passwords against accounts. "I'm just checking to see if this key happens to work in this door...."

To flesh out this analogy a bit: suppose I contract with AT&T to come up with a system of cleaning my house every week. AT&T sends maids each week, and installs a front door on my house to facilitate the maids, and tells me that the door is "safe". Then along comes this guy who has realized that any kid with a slide ruler can easily open every one of these allegedly "safe" doors.

And the vulnerability is so obvious that AT&T either knew all about it or was so stupid that it rises to gross negligence. To me it's practically immaterial whether he made any effort to tell AT&T (don't know if he did), but based on AT&T prosecuting him, I'm willing to believe AT&T was in no mood to do jack squat about their "error".

Comment: Re:Found 'em (Score 4, Informative) 619

by sacrilicious (#43179639) Attached to: Samsung Unveils the Galaxy S4

Well, the last two quarters they were outselling all other smartphones on every U.S. carrier that carried them.

Even if this were true, what an incredibly misleading statement. Android has 75% of the smartphone market outright, and rising FAST. I have no idea if Apple somehow outsells every other *individual* model of cellphone (or however else your statement might be twisted to be "true"), but the raw numbers most definitely support the rhetorical asking/observation "where's Apple in all this".

And all those cores are of little use without software to use them. iOS still has a huge quality and power lead in apps.

I'd ask for substantiation, but this quote is too subjective to warrant it.

"Facts are stupid things." -- President Ronald Reagan (a blooper from his speeach at the '88 GOP convention)

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