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Comment Maybe they're misinterpreting the results (Score 4, Interesting) 175

If you're asking someone to absorb fluff (like nonsense about aliens) then perhaps it's a good idea to manufacture 'disfluency' with odd fonts and the like.

If you're asking someone to absorb difficult material (like Knuth or advanced physics) then you want to minimize other sources of 'disfluency'.

Comment vexatious surveillance (Score 1) 214

You might see instances of vexatious surveillance. Imagine a group of people like the fine folks at 4chan with their hands on this technology, using the tech to stalk individuals the 4chan group mind has decided to go after.
Some people will be getting much more attention from this system than others, I'm guessing.

Comment Problem-Reaction-Solution (Score 2, Interesting) 214

The brits are using a time-proven formula to make their citizens demand previously unpopular policies. It's called Problem-Reaction-Solution. Once a problem is allowed to get bad enough (say, crime) there will be a reaction from the enraged populace, and they will eagerly embrace the solution (say, snitching) offered by the people who engineered the problem to begin with. Governments do it again and again because the public falls for it every time.
Google

The Effect of Snake Oil Security 110

Trailrunner7 writes "Threatpost has a guest column by Robert Hansen (aka Rsnake) about the long-term effects of snake-oil security products. 'I've talked about this a few times over the years during various presentations but I wanted to document it here as well. It's a concept that I've been wrestling with for 7+ years and I don't think I've made any headway in convincing anyone, beyond a few head nods. Bad security isn't just bad because it allows you to be exploited. It's also a long term cost center. But more interestingly, even the most worthless security tools can be proven to "work" if you look at the numbers.'"

Comment Let's try this again. "If only he knew..." (Score 2, Interesting) 215

It's practically a given that TEMPEST-like capabilities moved to satellites, decades ago. Combine that with ECHELON or something like it, and everything that everyone is displaying on their screens (Internet-connected or not) is probably being hoovered up by at least one intelligence agency. Including what's on the screens of those precious Blackberries.

Comment Re:Electronic tax filing should be FREE (Score 3, Interesting) 374

In theory, you'd think this would be the case. In practice, most people filing on April 15th are filing to get their money back, not send money in.

There are actually no incentives for governments to make it easier for taxpayers to get refunds. Taxpayers can create those incentives by reducing their withholdings to $0 so that they owe the government on April 15th rather than the other way around. Given California's problems, that seems like a pretty good idea anyway.

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