I watched a thief check door handles once, looking for low hanging fruit. As I said, as long as he found plenty unlocked, the locked ones were safer. When four in a row were locked, he smashed a window. Locks didn't keep him out, not when either a lots of people used them or he saw something he wanted.

That thief is currently serving time for murder for hire.

I'd bet $100 I could simply kick in your door and walk out with your stuff.

You COULD spend $10,000 on a security system to protect your $10,000 worth of stuff. That would be stupid, though, wouldn't it.

Let's say you did spend $10,000 on security. In that case , a burglar would want to spend $4 on a ski mask and maybe $13 on a post driver to knock the door in. Then smash the door in an QUICKLY grab $3,000 worth of electronics etc. You spent $10,000, the bad guy spent $17 to defeat it (and didn't wait around for the security company to first call you, then call the cops.)

I used to work as a locksmith. Now I secure computer systems for a living. I've yet to see one I couldn't break with ease. There ARE some strong security measures you can take with a computer, just like there are quality locks. Quality locks won't stop a large crowbar and no amount of computer security will stop a root kit.

Given the overall percentage of libertarians (1%?) and the overall percentage of liberals (48%?), clearly it isn't anywhere near "all libertarians". This proves that:

The liberals are completely wrong.

That's the only conclusion that can be drawn by anyone who can follow simple logic. People who can follow simple logic knew that already, though.

I'm KIDDING you hyper-sensisitive liberal weenie who is furiously clicking the "reply" button. Sometimes liberals are right, even Obama. Obama was right when he said the lack of a federal budget was a sign of no leadership from the president. Obama was right when he said if the economy isn't back on track in early 2012 he shouldn't be re-elected. Obama was right when he said it would be irresponsible of him to run for president because a presidential candidate should "know what you're doing". Liberals are very often right.

No, not a 911, an "I'm lost, and want to get unlost" emergency, which can happen all sorts of unpleasant ways - from telling a towtruck how to get to me to trying to walk out of an unfamiliar area. Any sort of mapping would work, but old-school feature phones won't have anything of course. Still, you don't need a real smart phone with an app store to have a built-in mapping app.

As has been pointed out to us in the last three weeks by the GOP, you can't simply "correct" what's wrong with a law, you have to repeal it ENTIRELY. Nothing short of that is acceptable. Even if there are things that are useful, the whole bathtub must be thrown out because to simply change the parts which are not working would be to admit that the Law isn't the end of civilization as we know it.

I'm with the GOP - repeal it entirely or I'll hold my breath until I pass out. Or something like that.

Blackberry has something that presently no one else has -- government security approval and systems in place using it.

Other players have earned the approval but none are currently deploying anything which exploits it.

My way lets them continue on doing their blackberry thing without compromising their approval. Wrapping it with Android enable fun and interesting apps.

OF course it works. "Zoom! Enhance!" If TV hasn't taught me that "enhance" works reliably, then TV has taught me nothing.

While there may be millions of possible reconstructions for a fuzzy, ill-defined image, the simplest (sparsest) version is probably the best fit."

Of the millions of possibilities, the sparsest is MOST likely. Perhaps it's twice as likely as any other possibility. That still means it's 99.999% likely to be wrong.

As for the MRI, that fuzzy part is probably noise that can be deleted, except when it's a tumor.

"

No, that's just not true. Any fool with a "bump key" can unlock my front door. The lock doesn't keep people out - the law does. The lock just makes it quite clear that a specific act breaks the law. Does that prevent all burglary? No, of course not. But it prevents a lot.

I'm not sure how that metaphor extends to DRM protecting my personal info, but I could see making it clear to individual employees of companies that have my data that "if you do X with this data, you're committing a crime", and that would help a lot. Few people would commit a felony for the benefit of their employer. But I don't see how that would actually be implemented.

I have an expensive smartphone and I want to trade up to a feature phone. I want physical buttons to make and receive calls, dammit - I want the phone part of the phone to be good! But I really want GPS with some sort of maps in an emergency. Anyone know a good simple phone with GPS/maps built in?

Mine does too, which is great for sites like Github where it's not actually a sign of mental illness to post things that render in monospace.

Yes, I have a normal family. What's your point? You expect a 50's evening TV family? Talk to someone who works in an ER sometime if you want real cynicism; heck, it's one of the reasons very few people have a long career in the ER: too much truth about human nature.

Yes that was my argument: your approach is simply not realistic. Security people always say "just fire everyone who doesn't comply", but in the real world they rarely have that sort of power, nor should they.

If the purpose of your company is to guard something, then fine. That's unlikely to be a Silly Valley startup. If the purpose of your company is to invent something cool, something worth guarding, then the inventers are more important than the security guards. Thus you want to work with human nature, not against it.

Heck, even in the military where you can go beyond firing people who don't follow the rules, it's still common practice to accommodate human nature to improve security. The more realistically you model the human parts of your solution, the better you'll do.

(You might notice that for example, the door to the smoking area already have the best security in the world: a tight group of people who all know each other, will recongnize anyone who doesn't belong, and who pay attention to who comes and goes. But your goal seems to be "control" not "security" - the fewer people like that with jobs, the better.)

Perhaps. It doesn't seem impossible to me that you could have the diamond allotrope, but on a sufficiently small scale that the result still behaves like a liquid. All of this is far beyond my knowledge, though.

"Locks keep people out of my house". They don't keep bad guys out. Anyone can kick the door in. I can pick the lock, as can many other people. A lock is a REQUEST. a "do not disturb" sign.

How about much bigger locks, like a bank vault? Have you ever noticed that most banks keep their vault door a) open and b) well polished? Does that look like security, or security theatre? Notice that next to the thick steel door is a plaster wall.

It's fairly rare that you can increase security enough that something is more expensive to steal than it's worth. Sometimes, but rarely. What you CAN do is avoid being low-hanging fruit. If only I use encryption while everyone else uses plain text, I'm safer. I don't have to outrun the bear, so to speak. If everyone encrypts their data , the bag actors will download the hack tool to decrypt it.