Are you unaware of the fact that scientific studies are currently, and have been in the past, conducted on this subject? Is that where your confusion is coming from? Because if you are, and you are still offering this argument, I seriously don't understand how you could go here.
Consider that in the specific test offered by Boeing engineers the worst offender was an iPad. So it is an extremely recent experiment. Consumer technology has changed radically over time. Studies conducted five or ten years ago are becoming decreasingly relevant.
Would you consider the following analogy better? [Insert anti-lock braking software investigation here]
No. It is also a poor analogy. The anecdotal evidence in the aircraft and auto cases are both user reports, pilots and drivers. However in the aircraft case we have laboratory evidence of devices exceeding allowable emissions. I don't see anything comparable in the car analogy, your "theoretically impossible" bit probably directly contradicts the Boeing example causing the analogy to fail - two different situations.
A far more important problem with the analogy is that using a car is more of a necessity for many individuals, whereas the use of a personal device during landing is a trivial and unnecessary act. Recall the cost-benefit analysis, a low frequency but high cost paired with a trivial benefit suggests forgoing the benefit while a highly useful benefit may suggest the risk is warranted. The later is pretty much a daily experience given the hazards of driving, one is more likely to get taken out by a drunk driver than a software failure in the brakes.
The trivial benefit of using a device during landing is the dominant fact in my argument. You have to address this to be convincing.
Do you have any understanding as to why so many people are reading your statement and thinking you are a bit crazy?
Yes, various reasons in various combinations. (1) They did not read the article and are unaware of the recent laboratory evidence by Boeing, they think there is nothing more than anecdotal stories from flight crews. (2) They are focused on a single problem and are failing to consider that catastrophic failures are sometimes due to simultaneously occurring minor problems that interact in a totally unexpected way, they are only considering a direct linear failure due to unacceptably high electromagnetic emissions. (3) They fail to consider that all anecdotal evidence is not equivalent. A commercial airline pilot's anecdotal story carries a little more weight than grandma's sunday drive anecdotal story. F16 pilot reports of instrumentation failures were somewhat dismissed when flight, ground and laboratory testing failed to turn anything up. It turned out that chaffing against a rivet destroyed insulation and caused intermittent shorts depending on how the cables bounced around during flight. Is RF shielding being damaged/degraded in flight somehow - again, multiple simultaneous problems. (4) Human nature. Defiance, denial, arrogance, etc. (5) And as you can probably guess by now:-), focusing on the very low probability of the event and ignoring the high cost of such an event and the near zero benefit gained by using the device.
Would reducing the software patent lifetime to 5 years or even less be the thing to do?
Sometimes the patent has to be filed during development, not when the product is being released. So that proposed five year time frame could include a couple of years of development. Perhaps five is too short, or perhaps that five years begins with product release. Maybe eight years from filing or five years from product launch, whichever occurs first?
There are times in history, up to and including the present day, when appeal to consequences was used to justify...
Turning off an electronic device during landing is hardly comparable to the violent actions you describe. I think you deserve a nomination for silliest analogy of the year.:-)
... In both circumstances, you can find out the truth very, very easily, and yet they do not...
Did you miss the part where a Boeing engineer who co-chaired a federal panel investigating personal devices on aircraft "took ABC News inside Boeing's electronic test chamber in Seattle, where engineers demonstrated the hidden signals from several electronic devices that were well over what Boeing considers the acceptable limit for aircraft equipment"?
Your analogy is also severely flawed. Eating is a necessity. Using a handheld device during landing is not.
Really? So, some idiot who has an anecdotal story (which, by the way, I can counter with my own, absolutely true, idiotic anecdotal story), should take precedence over scientific research, because scientific research once failed to predict a problem?
Your friend with a mild neurosis about GM foods is hardly comparable with a Boeing employee who co-chaired a committee that investigated portable devices and their affect on aircraft, and who also demonstrated radio emission beyond acceptable limits in a laboratory.
Why bother with science at all then? If that's the value of a scientific study to you, then perhaps you should be campaigning against science. While using a handheld device during landing isn't all that crazy important to me...
What a silly straw man you offer. Surely such a fan of science as yourself has heard of cost-benefit analysis. When a highly unlikely event is paired with an extremely high cost, especially hundreds of human lives, then the benefit must be something non-trivial. You are essentially admitting that a rational cost-benefit analysis would say to leave the devices off.
... basing laws on anecdotal evidence that directly contradicts scientific findings (and massive amounts of other anecdotal evidence) is dangerous - and that IS important to me. I absolutely refuse to ignore B.S. like this, just because someone says it's for the children.
Scientific results were offered, its more than pilot's anecdotal stories:
"To prove his point, Carson took ABC News inside Boeing's electronic test chamber in Seattle, where engineers demonstrated the hidden signals from several electronic devices that were well over what Boeing considers the acceptable limit for aircraft equipment."
and
"Boeing engineers told us that signals from PEDs could disrupt the navigation and communication frequencies on older planes, which are not as well shielded as the newer models."
True you can't prove safety, but my main argument is that the *burden of proof* is on the "its safe" side not on the "its unsafe" side as many around here seem to suggest.
I fly all the time. Its safer than driving and I do that every day. The odds of an unforeseen event affecting me is quite low, but like hitting the lottery someone will be affected by that extremely unlikely event. As seen with Air France over the South Atlantic. Or perhaps with these "anecdotal events".
What you and so many around here fail to realize is that air crashes are not usually the result of a single problem, they are often the result of multiple and often cascading problems. Look at any one problem in isolation, as is being done with the devices in question, and there does not seem to be much risk - but why introduce a new unknown for some trivial unimportant reason? What is so important for you to do with your device during landing that you can not have it sitting in your bag?
Actually, yes. How about something regarding consequences? Say 100+ people in a fragile machine, surround by flammable liquids, moving at a high rate of speed and doing so with limited to no visibility outside the machine having a "mishap" because someone had to check twitter? There are some activities where an excess of caution is warranted, personally I believe that needing to use an ***instrument landing system because of bad weather*** is one such activity.
Here's the problem with this reasoning. Much work has been done to prove a connection using scientific methods. The answer? Nope - not a problem - but let's keep looking, because, as you said, this is dangerous and important. And you say "Screw the science - anecdotal is good enough - cause it is dangerous!" Well, I'm sorry, but just because a friend of mine swears that genetically altered food contains arsenic because he got sick once, and was told he had food poisoning after eating an apple, doesn't mean it's something to freak out about - even though food poisoning is dangerous, and yes, it's possible he could have died.
The pitot tubes on certain Airbus aircraft were heavily tested using scientific methods and found to be safe. Reports of problems were probably considered anecdotal by some. Yet we eventually had a catastrophic loss of life where we found that the scientific methods employed failed to uncover a design flaw.
Your analogy is also severely flawed. Eating is a necessity. Using a handheld device during landing is not.
the burden of proof should be that a device needs to be proven safe, not that it needs to be proven hazardous.
Perhaps you should stop making up panicky, ridiculous statements like "the machine having a "mishap" because someone had to check twitter" and come up with something more sensible and, as the GP noted, based on empirical evidence instead of anecdotal evidence.
Your statement seems to dodge the issue that many lives are at risk and that this should shift the burden of proof. In other areas where lives are on the line the burden of prove is to prove safety, why not here? Why not require the scientific evidence to demonstrate that the device are safe?
If personal electronics carried by a passenger are a threat to avionics, then the problem is in how the plane is constructed.
Even if true, and given that the planes and avionics were designed before the devices in question existed this may be the case, however what is the remedy? Ban the airplane/avionics or ban the device during landing?
So what you're saying is, "Gee, flying planes is hard."
Why not also establish some empirical basis for the policy?
Actually I'm saying that flying planes is dangerous, and that given that *many* lives are at risk the burden of proof should be that a device needs to be proven safe, not that it needs to be proven hazardous.
There is a growing body of anecdotal evidence
Need I say more?
Actually, yes. How about something regarding consequences? Say 100+ people in a fragile machine, surround by flammable liquids, moving at a high rate of speed and doing so with limited to no visibility outside the machine having a "mishap" because someone had to check twitter? There are some activities where an excess of caution is warranted, personally I believe that needing to use an ***instrument landing system because of bad weather*** is one such activity.
Actually, yes. How about something regarding consequences? Say 100+ people in a fragile machine, surround by flammable liquids, moving at a high rate of speed and doing so with limited to no visibility outside the machine having a "mishap" because someone had to check twitter? There are some activities where an excess of caution is warranted, personally I believe that needing to use an ***instrument landing system because of bad weather*** is one such activity.
Besides, who's going to report than NBC produced the videos? NBC?
The more important question is why would any other network want to show a PSA that credits NBC? The lack of references to NBC probably has more to due with network rivalry than anything else. I have a faint recollection that the networks like to overlay *their* logo over the PSA, "this PSA brought to you by [insert network here] and ICE."
Who cares who made it, IF the content was accurate(*) then fine. IF, and this is admittedly a big if, ICE gave some sort of specification or script to NBC then does it really matter? Producing a video might be the sort of thing you would want the government to outsource.
Alternative IF NBC wrote the script and the government found it to be accurate(*), then fine.
Note that I am not commenting on this video. I'm just challenging that idea that if someone else produced the video there is inherently a problem.
(*) Perhaps some would prefer "consistent with the government's position" rather than "accurate".
Its been many years since I visited the Apple campus but I recall a store. Nothing like the Apple Stores around the country today, it was more like a gift shop on steroids. I'm not 100% sure but I think you could get computers there, you could definitely get Apple logo'ed beer mugs, coffee mugs, keychains, etc. Perhaps they could simply put a store on the new campus, although I hope they would supplement the normal Apple Store inventory with the coffee mugs, etc.
This could just as easily be a false leak. It would be ridiculous to take these statements at face-value, given that misinformation is one of the CIA's strongest suits.
That is exactly the reaction they hoped for among the more tech savvy.;-)
I was being facetious implying that this is not really that far outside of Apple normal behaviour. Although I'm not convinced that they have said no install media. I didn't find any confirmation on that.
Sorry, I couldn't resist the opportunity for an attempt at humor.
I would not be surprised if an upgrade media never appears. However I do expect that new Macs will ship with 10.7 Tiger reinstall media.
I'm sure they'd be happy to do it for you at the Apple Store.
Assuming you live near an Apple Store. Or did I miss the announcement about Starbuck's training all their baristas to also function as "Apple Store Geniuses"? "I'd like a coffee and a Mac OS X reinstall.";-)
I mean, for $25 I get legal versions of every single—ahem, questionably procured, shall we say— tracks in my gigantic iTunes library?
Didn't they say "ripped"? Perhaps they distinguish between things you ripped from a CD in iTunes from things you downloaded. Although if they did allow anything at all that would be an interesting attempt to monetize all the pirated music out there.
I guess credit card data is not important to protect
For some people the credit card number that Sony has is not important. It is a temporary alias for the real card number. This alias issued by the bank's online services upon user request, has a user defined expiration, has a user defined limit, and it *locks* to the first company that makes a charge on it.
If that's not playing God, then I don't know what is. These guys are no longer playing with the stuff our universe is made of, they're now playing with what it's/not/ made of. That's quite amazing, if you ask me.
My understanding is that the universe is made of both matter and antimatter, just much more of the former and not so much of the later. Matter is just more prevalent and has therefore survived the annihilations.
If you're a hacker, my bet is you have at least 10 more friends with recent gaming rigs... And guess what? The problem is embarrassingly parallelizable. 4.8 days for a 9 char password(worst case, btw)
But your friends have to stop playing games for 4.8 days. Good luck convincing them of that because you want to crack a single password.;-)
... My passwords are 32 characters long, contain upper case lower case numbers and symbols, and are easy to remember. That creates a search space of 1.86 x 10^65 possible passwords....
That sounds like you are using some words. If so the search space is smaller than you believe. Any time you can use the phrase "easy to remember" you no longer can use the mathematics of random permutations. Think in terms of tokens not characters, with a token being a word or a character. A token that is a word may be more secure since there are more words in a vocabulary than letters in an alphabet but a five character word is far less secure than 5 random characters.
Phrases are not as secure as one might expect, it is not equivalent to a password several dozen characters in length. In some ways it is like substituting words for letters, a seven word password is only more secure than a seven character password in the sense that there are more words in a person's vocabulary than they are letters in the alphabet. Perhaps a "practical" improvement but not even approaching "pretty much unbreakable", even with substitution. In short, all the things that make passphrases easier to remember works in favor of the cracker. Frequency and correlation are a factor. In something analogous to a dictionary attack, given a phrase of a certain number of characters one might try famous quotes, passages, etc that match that length.
FWIW, phrases were often used to test the configuration of German enigma encryption machines during WW2. The British at Bletchley Park had some success in discovering unknown phrases and that was with 1940s technology. One German operator was discovered to be using the German equivalent to "mary had a little lamb". Better yet, he used that phrase every morning despite his training.
If you read the article he does raise valid concerns about poorly performing apps that may degrade the user's experience. He's not merely complaining, he's also suggesting a possible solution:
"Motoblur collects information about customer use of applications and how that use relates to functions like power consumption. With that data, Motorola learns which applications drain power. "We are getting to the place that we should be able to warn you," Jha said. He envisions presenting a notice to users when they launch an application alerting them that using the application will drain 35 percent of the phone's power, for example, he said. The user can then decide to continue or conserve power."
Slashdot Mirror
Are you unaware of the fact that scientific studies are currently, and have been in the past, conducted on this subject? Is that where your confusion is coming from? Because if you are, and you are still offering this argument, I seriously don't understand how you could go here.
Consider that in the specific test offered by Boeing engineers the worst offender was an iPad. So it is an extremely recent experiment. Consumer technology has changed radically over time. Studies conducted five or ten years ago are becoming decreasingly relevant.
Would you consider the following analogy better? [Insert anti-lock braking software investigation here]
No. It is also a poor analogy. The anecdotal evidence in the aircraft and auto cases are both user reports, pilots and drivers. However in the aircraft case we have laboratory evidence of devices exceeding allowable emissions. I don't see anything comparable in the car analogy, your "theoretically impossible" bit probably directly contradicts the Boeing example causing the analogy to fail - two different situations.
A far more important problem with the analogy is that using a car is more of a necessity for many individuals, whereas the use of a personal device during landing is a trivial and unnecessary act. Recall the cost-benefit analysis, a low frequency but high cost paired with a trivial benefit suggests forgoing the benefit while a highly useful benefit may suggest the risk is warranted. The later is pretty much a daily experience given the hazards of driving, one is more likely to get taken out by a drunk driver than a software failure in the brakes.
The trivial benefit of using a device during landing is the dominant fact in my argument. You have to address this to be convincing.
Do you have any understanding as to why so many people are reading your statement and thinking you are a bit crazy?
Yes, various reasons in various combinations. (1) They did not read the article and are unaware of the recent laboratory evidence by Boeing, they think there is nothing more than anecdotal stories from flight crews. (2) They are focused on a single problem and are failing to consider that catastrophic failures are sometimes due to simultaneously occurring minor problems that interact in a totally unexpected way, they are only considering a direct linear failure due to unacceptably high electromagnetic emissions. (3) They fail to consider that all anecdotal evidence is not equivalent. A commercial airline pilot's anecdotal story carries a little more weight than grandma's sunday drive anecdotal story. F16 pilot reports of instrumentation failures were somewhat dismissed when flight, ground and laboratory testing failed to turn anything up. It turned out that chaffing against a rivet destroyed insulation and caused intermittent shorts depending on how the cables bounced around during flight. Is RF shielding being damaged/degraded in flight somehow - again, multiple simultaneous problems. (4) Human nature. Defiance, denial, arrogance, etc. (5) And as you can probably guess by now :-), focusing on the very low probability of the event and ignoring the high cost of such an event and the near zero benefit gained by using the device.
Would reducing the software patent lifetime to 5 years or even less be the thing to do?
Sometimes the patent has to be filed during development, not when the product is being released. So that proposed five year time frame could include a couple of years of development. Perhaps five is too short, or perhaps that five years begins with product release. Maybe eight years from filing or five years from product launch, whichever occurs first?
There are times in history, up to and including the present day, when appeal to consequences was used to justify ...
Turning off an electronic device during landing is hardly comparable to the violent actions you describe. I think you deserve a nomination for silliest analogy of the year. :-)
... In both circumstances, you can find out the truth very, very easily, and yet they do not ...
Did you miss the part where a Boeing engineer who co-chaired a federal panel investigating personal devices on aircraft "took ABC News inside Boeing's electronic test chamber in Seattle, where engineers demonstrated the hidden signals from several electronic devices that were well over what Boeing considers the acceptable limit for aircraft equipment"?
Your analogy is also severely flawed. Eating is a necessity. Using a handheld device during landing is not.
Really? So, some idiot who has an anecdotal story (which, by the way, I can counter with my own, absolutely true, idiotic anecdotal story), should take precedence over scientific research, because scientific research once failed to predict a problem?
Your friend with a mild neurosis about GM foods is hardly comparable with a Boeing employee who co-chaired a committee that investigated portable devices and their affect on aircraft, and who also demonstrated radio emission beyond acceptable limits in a laboratory.
Why bother with science at all then? If that's the value of a scientific study to you, then perhaps you should be campaigning against science. While using a handheld device during landing isn't all that crazy important to me ...
What a silly straw man you offer. Surely such a fan of science as yourself has heard of cost-benefit analysis. When a highly unlikely event is paired with an extremely high cost, especially hundreds of human lives, then the benefit must be something non-trivial. You are essentially admitting that a rational cost-benefit analysis would say to leave the devices off.
... basing laws on anecdotal evidence that directly contradicts scientific findings (and massive amounts of other anecdotal evidence) is dangerous - and that IS important to me. I absolutely refuse to ignore B.S. like this, just because someone says it's for the children.
Scientific results were offered, its more than pilot's anecdotal stories:
"To prove his point, Carson took ABC News inside Boeing's electronic test chamber in Seattle, where engineers demonstrated the hidden signals from several electronic devices that were well over what Boeing considers the acceptable limit for aircraft equipment."
and
"Boeing engineers told us that signals from PEDs could disrupt the navigation and communication frequencies on older planes, which are not as well shielded as the newer models."
True you can't prove safety, but my main argument is that the *burden of proof* is on the "its safe" side not on the "its unsafe" side as many around here seem to suggest.
I fly all the time. Its safer than driving and I do that every day. The odds of an unforeseen event affecting me is quite low, but like hitting the lottery someone will be affected by that extremely unlikely event. As seen with Air France over the South Atlantic. Or perhaps with these "anecdotal events".
What you and so many around here fail to realize is that air crashes are not usually the result of a single problem, they are often the result of multiple and often cascading problems. Look at any one problem in isolation, as is being done with the devices in question, and there does not seem to be much risk - but why introduce a new unknown for some trivial unimportant reason? What is so important for you to do with your device during landing that you can not have it sitting in your bag?
Actually, yes. How about something regarding consequences? Say 100+ people in a fragile machine, surround by flammable liquids, moving at a high rate of speed and doing so with limited to no visibility outside the machine having a "mishap" because someone had to check twitter? There are some activities where an excess of caution is warranted, personally I believe that needing to use an ***instrument landing system because of bad weather*** is one such activity.
Here's the problem with this reasoning. Much work has been done to prove a connection using scientific methods. The answer? Nope - not a problem - but let's keep looking, because, as you said, this is dangerous and important. And you say "Screw the science - anecdotal is good enough - cause it is dangerous!" Well, I'm sorry, but just because a friend of mine swears that genetically altered food contains arsenic because he got sick once, and was told he had food poisoning after eating an apple, doesn't mean it's something to freak out about - even though food poisoning is dangerous, and yes, it's possible he could have died.
The pitot tubes on certain Airbus aircraft were heavily tested using scientific methods and found to be safe. Reports of problems were probably considered anecdotal by some. Yet we eventually had a catastrophic loss of life where we found that the scientific methods employed failed to uncover a design flaw.
Your analogy is also severely flawed. Eating is a necessity. Using a handheld device during landing is not.
Perhaps you should stop making up panicky, ridiculous statements like "the machine having a "mishap" because someone had to check twitter" and come up with something more sensible and, as the GP noted, based on empirical evidence instead of anecdotal evidence.
Your statement seems to dodge the issue that many lives are at risk and that this should shift the burden of proof. In other areas where lives are on the line the burden of prove is to prove safety, why not here? Why not require the scientific evidence to demonstrate that the device are safe?
If personal electronics carried by a passenger are a threat to avionics, then the problem is in how the plane is constructed.
Even if true, and given that the planes and avionics were designed before the devices in question existed this may be the case, however what is the remedy? Ban the airplane/avionics or ban the device during landing?
So what you're saying is, "Gee, flying planes is hard."
Why not also establish some empirical basis for the policy?
Actually I'm saying that flying planes is dangerous, and that given that *many* lives are at risk the burden of proof should be that a device needs to be proven safe, not that it needs to be proven hazardous.
There is a growing body of anecdotal evidence
Need I say more?
Actually, yes. How about something regarding consequences? Say 100+ people in a fragile machine, surround by flammable liquids, moving at a high rate of speed and doing so with limited to no visibility outside the machine having a "mishap" because someone had to check twitter? There are some activities where an excess of caution is warranted, personally I believe that needing to use an ***instrument landing system because of bad weather*** is one such activity.
There is a growing body of anecdotal evidence
Need I say more?
Actually, yes. How about something regarding consequences? Say 100+ people in a fragile machine, surround by flammable liquids, moving at a high rate of speed and doing so with limited to no visibility outside the machine having a "mishap" because someone had to check twitter? There are some activities where an excess of caution is warranted, personally I believe that needing to use an ***instrument landing system because of bad weather*** is one such activity.
Besides, who's going to report than NBC produced the videos? NBC?
The more important question is why would any other network want to show a PSA that credits NBC? The lack of references to NBC probably has more to due with network rivalry than anything else. I have a faint recollection that the networks like to overlay *their* logo over the PSA, "this PSA brought to you by [insert network here] and ICE."
Who cares who made it, IF the content was accurate(*) then fine. IF, and this is admittedly a big if, ICE gave some sort of specification or script to NBC then does it really matter? Producing a video might be the sort of thing you would want the government to outsource.
Alternative IF NBC wrote the script and the government found it to be accurate(*), then fine.
Note that I am not commenting on this video. I'm just challenging that idea that if someone else produced the video there is inherently a problem.
(*) Perhaps some would prefer "consistent with the government's position" rather than "accurate".
Its been many years since I visited the Apple campus but I recall a store. Nothing like the Apple Stores around the country today, it was more like a gift shop on steroids. I'm not 100% sure but I think you could get computers there, you could definitely get Apple logo'ed beer mugs, coffee mugs, keychains, etc. Perhaps they could simply put a store on the new campus, although I hope they would supplement the normal Apple Store inventory with the coffee mugs, etc.
Don't you mean "Apple Store Genii". Plural of genius being "genii" and all.
Both geniuses and genii are correct. Besides if I used genii most folks would not know what I meant. :-)
Even a dinosaur like me remembers SETI@Home and its spiritual successors. ;-)
This could just as easily be a false leak. It would be ridiculous to take these statements at face-value, given that misinformation is one of the CIA's strongest suits.
That is exactly the reaction they hoped for among the more tech savvy. ;-)
I was being facetious implying that this is not really that far outside of Apple normal behaviour. Although I'm not convinced that they have said no install media. I didn't find any confirmation on that.
Sorry, I couldn't resist the opportunity for an attempt at humor.
I would not be surprised if an upgrade media never appears. However I do expect that new Macs will ship with 10.7 Tiger reinstall media.
I'm sure they'd be happy to do it for you at the Apple Store.
Assuming you live near an Apple Store. Or did I miss the announcement about Starbuck's training all their baristas to also function as "Apple Store Geniuses"? "I'd like a coffee and a Mac OS X reinstall." ;-)
I mean, for $25 I get legal versions of every single—ahem, questionably procured, shall we say— tracks in my gigantic iTunes library?
Didn't they say "ripped"? Perhaps they distinguish between things you ripped from a CD in iTunes from things you downloaded. Although if they did allow anything at all that would be an interesting attempt to monetize all the pirated music out there.
I guess credit card data is not important to protect
For some people the credit card number that Sony has is not important. It is a temporary alias for the real card number. This alias issued by the bank's online services upon user request, has a user defined expiration, has a user defined limit, and it *locks* to the first company that makes a charge on it.
If that's not playing God, then I don't know what is. These guys are no longer playing with the stuff our universe is made of, they're now playing with what it's /not/ made of. That's quite amazing, if you ask me.
My understanding is that the universe is made of both matter and antimatter, just much more of the former and not so much of the later. Matter is just more prevalent and has therefore survived the annihilations.
If you're a hacker, my bet is you have at least 10 more friends with recent gaming rigs... And guess what? The problem is embarrassingly parallelizable. 4.8 days for a 9 char password(worst case, btw)
But your friends have to stop playing games for 4.8 days. Good luck convincing them of that because you want to crack a single password. ;-)
... My passwords are 32 characters long, contain upper case lower case numbers and symbols, and are easy to remember. That creates a search space of 1.86 x 10^65 possible passwords. ...
That sounds like you are using some words. If so the search space is smaller than you believe. Any time you can use the phrase "easy to remember" you no longer can use the mathematics of random permutations. Think in terms of tokens not characters, with a token being a word or a character. A token that is a word may be more secure since there are more words in a vocabulary than letters in an alphabet but a five character word is far less secure than 5 random characters.
Phrases are not as secure as one might expect, it is not equivalent to a password several dozen characters in length. In some ways it is like substituting words for letters, a seven word password is only more secure than a seven character password in the sense that there are more words in a person's vocabulary than they are letters in the alphabet. Perhaps a "practical" improvement but not even approaching "pretty much unbreakable", even with substitution. In short, all the things that make passphrases easier to remember works in favor of the cracker. Frequency and correlation are a factor. In something analogous to a dictionary attack, given a phrase of a certain number of characters one might try famous quotes, passages, etc that match that length.
FWIW, phrases were often used to test the configuration of German enigma encryption machines during WW2. The British at Bletchley Park had some success in discovering unknown phrases and that was with 1940s technology. One German operator was discovered to be using the German equivalent to "mary had a little lamb". Better yet, he used that phrase every morning despite his training.
If you read the article he does raise valid concerns about poorly performing apps that may degrade the user's experience. He's not merely complaining, he's also suggesting a possible solution:
"Motoblur collects information about customer use of applications and how that use relates to functions like power consumption. With that data, Motorola learns which applications drain power. "We are getting to the place that we should be able to warn you," Jha said. He envisions presenting a notice to users when they launch an application alerting them that using the application will drain 35 percent of the phone's power, for example, he said. The user can then decide to continue or conserve power."
Fuck Windows too. This is Slashdot. I have a four digit user ID. What operating system do you think I use, dipshit?
Given the 90s timeframe and your level of anger I'd say you are obviously a very disappointed OS/2 user. ;-)