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User: QuasiSteve

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  1. What Apple's iWatch Can Learn From Pebble on What Apple's iWatch Can Learn From Pebble · · Score: 5, Funny

    Nothing. Pebble clearly copied the iWatch and violates several of Apple's patents. :)

  2. Republican / Talk show host on CISPA's Author Has Another Privacy-Killing Bill To Pass Before He Retires · · Score: 2

    Might as well - you know half the comments will be about party affiliation anyway, and then a bunch of comments will be about whether it's really this government's fault, or the one before it, etc.

    Also, while politicians are annoying, talk show hosts can be much worse. If successful, he could pollute, I mean sway, the mind of quite a few people and get his way in the end without needing to be a politician.

  3. research: tx malleability at MtGox unlikely on Mt. Gox Working With Japanese Cops; Creditors Want CEO To Testify In US · · Score: 2

    Unlikely to be the cause of the vast majority of the claimed 'lost' coins, that is.

    Bitcoin Transaction Malleability and MtGox
    http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.6676

    In Bitcoin, transaction malleability describes the fact that the signatures that prove the ownership of bitcoins being transferred in a transaction do not provide any integrity guarantee for the signatures themselves. This allows an attacker to mount a malleability attack in which it intercepts, modifies, and rebroadcasts a transaction, causing the transaction issuer to believe that the original transaction was not confirmed. In February 2014 MtGox, once the largest Bitcoin exchange, closed and filed for bankruptcy claiming that attackers used malleability attacks to drain its accounts. In this work we use traces of the Bitcoin network for over a year preceding the filing to show that, while the problem is real, there was no widespread use of malleability attacks before the closure of MtGox.

  4. Re:Dicks Getting Punched Not New on Google Tries To Defuse Glass "Myths" · · Score: 1

    Yes, but remind me exactly why I shouldn't be suspicious of you being on a call walking down the same street as I am? I can't tell if you're really just making a call, or recording everything I happen to be saying. I can't tell if you're just holding that smartphone to your ear, or also having the back side camera record everything that happens in that direction - i.e. ME. I certainly can't tell if your GPS is on and you are logging your position.. which, by 'coincindence' (or so you'll claim) happens to right near where I am, too, and I have no idea whether any of that information is getting shared with Google, Apple, Microsoft, facebook, twitter, the U.S. government, the German government, or just your pet dog.

    Let's be honest here, a huge portion of people's dislike for Google Glass is 1. That people don't take the darn things off when they probably should be (somebody else commented about prescription versions and then needing to carry two sets of glasses, I think - sounds like a fair trade-off, if Google won't make a model where you can physically detach something to reassure the people around you that the only thing recording them is the HD button camera) and 2. the 'dork' factor. Same reason a lot of people hate 3D movies - they don't like the 'stupid-looking' glasses. Nevermind that they're in a dark theater and everybody is wearing them. It's out of the norm and thus catches flak, regardless.

    Again, I fully understand people's concerns - but I'm saying that a huge part of that is the psychological aspect of being able to see it. right there. on somebody's face. creepy by default.

  5. Re:Isn't This A Bit Irresponsible? on AWS Urges Devs To Scrub Secret Keys From GitHub · · Score: 1

    Depends on how public the knowledge already is

    Readily public - even if not specific to AWS:

    http://it.slashdot.org/story/1...

  6. Re:How effective is such an ... urging? on AWS Urges Devs To Scrub Secret Keys From GitHub · · Score: 2, Informative

    Wouldn't the Streisand Effect in this context imply that more developers are going to be placing their AWS/API keys in plain view?

    I think you're more referring to the effect of full disclosure, where by making it public you end up not just notifying the potential victims (if they're even awake) but also a not statistically insignificant amount of script kiddies - thus instead of having the effect of less exploited victims, you end up getting more. At least initially - in the long run it should be the other way around.

    I seem to remember this having been a story before, though, so they should have been warned in the past.. or known better regardless.
    Ah, yes: http://it.slashdot.org/story/1...

  7. Re:We could, but we don't on Google Tries To Defuse Glass "Myths" · · Score: 2

    This is true, and I certainly understand and appreciate the concern - the question is whether that is truly something people should fear; i.e. that Google will somehow switch it to 'always on' or start an interval snapshot, with results uploaded and analyzed to their servers.. or whether that is something that, should it come to be, would be met even by Google Glass owners as "no thanks" with them disabling it, taking Glass off (more often), or just not using it anymore at all.

    I just find the psychology of it interesting in that there's a very strong opposition to that potential erosion, vs the very real and existing erosion that things like smart phones (be that people taking pictures, tracking location (my smartphone 'knows' which other smartphones are near if they have their wifi and/or bluetooth on, for example), or just the general intrusion into life as we know it via communication) - not to mention once shared with e.g. Google, facebook, twitter, foursquare (and combinations thereof - somebody on my twitter search results for a particular town keeps auto-tweeting when they get home. If that ever stops, either they finally disabled it, they're dead, or they went on vacation - oh to be a burglar), etc. - have already brought on and made to be quite 'normal', and is also a very visible technology.
    I'd imagine a similar response would occur with somebody walking down a street with an obtrusively visible microphone - even though the dozen people walking down the same road yapping on their phones will have the other side hearing everything in the surrounding area as well (though phones try to actually stop that for noise cancelling purposes, of course).

  8. Re:A lense cover on Google Tries To Defuse Glass "Myths" · · Score: 1

    Google Glass is always pointed at the person they're talking to, and always gives the impression that they're recording.

    And this, of course, is the crux of the problem. Between people keeping glass on when it's probably rude to do so, and people having a psychological response that somebody wearing glass must always be recording them (or at least readily in a position to do so).
    Faced with a person who wears an HD button cam, however, they do not have this psychological response.. even though their every move may very well be recorded; ignorance truly is bliss in this case.
    Doesn't change that people who use Google Glass can easily decide to take it off in personal situations, of course.

  9. Re:Dicks Getting Punched Not New on Google Tries To Defuse Glass "Myths" · · Score: 1

    To those who claim that glassholes are doing nothing wrong, try this little experiment: Go to your local Wal-Mart, when the parking lot is busy with people walking in and out, take out your digital camera, and walk through a busy part of the parking lot.

    With you so far....

    Squat down behind each car, and take a close-up photo of the license plate. Make sure it is very clear what you are doing

    ...and then you lost me.

    Is this something 'glassholes' do? They squat down and take pictures of license plates using their Google Glass?

  10. Re:Corporations do NOT operate under color of law on They're Reading Your Mail: Microsoft's ToS, Windows 8 Leak, and Snooping · · Score: 1

    So, when they try to justify trespassing on someone's email account

    Which is a service provided by them. Hosted on their servers. Stored on their servers. Wait, which part of this was trespassing?

    stealing their email

    Reading. Unless they somehow actually moved the bits of the e-mail out of the person's account, and into theirs. Even if they made a copy, it's not stealing.

    by saying that they had "probable cause to believe" whatever, it doesn't fly

    Why doesn't it, though? And in what sense? A moral sense, a business internal rules and regulations sense, a legal sense?

    Maybe I should go break into my neighbor's house in the middle of the night and ransack the place because I have probable cause to believe he "borrowed" my week whacker without asking... that'd be perfectly okay, right Microsoft?

    Horrible analogy. What if your neighbor came into your house each night, with your permission of course, you told them that they can use your computer all they like without fear of you peeking of their shoulder as it were, as long as they don't start downloading a bunch of movies, and that you reserve the right to check their internet activity if you believe they did - then find that your internet usage surged and you kept hearing the 20th Century Fox, Universal and other well-known studio themes?

    Would you then, as per your own stipulation, check whether maybe they did download a whole bunch of movies - even though the person may have just been downloading Linux distros and playing those studio themes on youtube because they're a fan of movie studio themes?

    If no: Why not?

    If yes: How bad would you feel about doing so?

    While it's all good and well to think our stuff at third parties is private - and in some cases some laws may even agree with you to an extent - I think we're all aware that in practice, anybody can be looking in.. and when the subject of the material is the proprietor of the service, doubly so.

  11. "And the movie about Noah" on Creationists Demand Equal Airtime With 'Cosmos' · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Noah?

    This Noah?
    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt19...

    With Russell Crowe, Emma Watson, visual effects galore and explosions - that Noah?

    Yeah it may have some connections to the story of Noah, but then '300' had some connections to the actual story of the Battle of Thermopylae.. I don't think either should be taken too particularly seriously as exemplary of the source material.

  12. Re:They didn't, but did, but didn't... on Fluke Donates Multimeters To SparkFun As Goodwill Gesture · · Score: 0

    I agree that one should push for reform.

    However, does your stance extend to the copyright system?

  13. They didn't, but did, but didn't... on Fluke Donates Multimeters To SparkFun As Goodwill Gesture · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They didn't.. insofar as Fluke reps standing at ports waiting for a multimeter to pass by their eyes and go "Whoa, Nelly!" - or even getting a call in advance telling them that a shipment of DMMs was found that may or may not infringe.

    They did... insofar as Fluke having registered for the trade dress in the first place.

    They didn't... insofar as cheap knockoffs trying to copy Fluke's looks - regardless of intent there, Fluke rather they didn't - and since asking nicely tends not to work, trade dress it is.

    A lot of people seem to have missed the issue in the original story anyway (even if it may have come across as an attack against Fluke based on e.g. the title).
    SparkFun doesn't really mind Fluke's trade dress (other than believing it to be overly broad - they themselves deem the old SFE DMM's border to be more of an orange..). What they mind is the inflexibility of the system once you're confronted with such an issue. For example, SFE didn't appear to have any way to tell CBP that they believed the borders to be orange and thus not even run afoul of the trade dress to begin with and enter e.g. arbitration with either the CBP or with Fluke. There's also the matter of how the product gets destroyed, with only a quoted price per hour - but no indication of how long it would take. Responsible destruction would take a very long time, a shredder should take less than 30 minutes; either could easily be possible for the price cited. Then there's the whole option of 'either ship them away or have them destroyed' in the first place; No "you can store them here and adjust the product so it no longer infringes", and even if you could adjust them, the period in which you have to make that decision is rather short.

    While it's easy enough to say that SFE should have done better in figuring out this could occur beforehand, that doesn't help once the issue does arise.
    Some will shrug that off and say "well I guess if you have to learn the hard way...", others will contemplate the bureaucracy.

    Note that this is pretty much a separate issue from whether or not the color combo should be something that you can get a trade mark/dress on in the first place, which most people focused on (next to the "if you copy a popular brand, you oughtta know this can happen" discussion).

  14. Re:Uh the NSA post it says different on Gmail Goes HTTPS Only For All Connections · · Score: 3, Informative

    Isn't that in part what this..

    The change is a significant one, especially given the fact that Google also has encrypted all of the links between its data centers.

    ..is supposed to refer to?

    Of course if they're just going to pretend to be Google and fool browsers into thinking they're talking to Google and decrypt/re-encrypt at that point, there's not much Google can do about it anyway.

  15. Re:actors across series on Interviews: Ask J. Michael Straczynski What You Will · · Score: 1

    True, though the bone-throwing applies to many actors. Heck, Nathan Fillion still gets to make Firefly jokes on practically any show/in any movie he's in. Of course that's become a bit of a running gag, but I don't think any director so far has said "no." to that.

    Completely off-topic, in my mail client this read as "Reactors across series" and I for the life of me couldn't imagine what that would be a reply to, but was intrigued :)

  16. Re:Bitcoin can be changed? on Bitcoin's Software Gets Security Fixes, New Features · · Score: 1

    Of course Bitcoin can be changed. You can make a version of Bitcoin in which, for example, the supply is raised. All you then need to do is convince the network that your version is the authoritative version, and all you need for that is to bribe a few pool operators who have unsurprisingly little interest in that sort of thing happening.

    The currency can't practically be manipulated at this time. The market can always be manipulated, of course.

  17. Re:so much for untracability on Bitcoin's Software Gets Security Fixes, New Features · · Score: 1

    so much for untracability

    Uhm. The public ledger makes it rather explicit that every transaction can be traced between two points.

    latest version automatically supplies a refund address

    You can always manually specify a refund address, maybe you'll chose the one you already spent from, thus increasing taint.
    I..e. Bob sends Bitcoin to Alice, Alice can't deliver the goods and decides to refund, and thus refunds to Bob.

    With refund addresses newly generated, people can only see that Alice made another transfer to X. X could be Bob (and if the amount is rather distinguishing, could be a reasonable assumption), but it could be Eve.

    Note also that this is just a change in the reference client which can be safely ignored. You don't have to provide a refund address.

  18. Re:LOL .. 0.9.0? on Bitcoin's Software Gets Security Fixes, New Features · · Score: 1

    Appearances matter. What does it say that the developers and project managers don't think a piece of software is ready after 2, 5, even 10 years

    You're still arguing that 0.x means they don't think it's 'ready'. Maybe they really do think that, hell if I know - as per your second paragraph, 'ready' may well be a moving target as it is. Does that mean it "doesn't pass muster"?

    How many people adopted Gmail *in production* even though it was in beta, explicitly labeled as such, for years?

    OP's beef was clearly entirely based on a version number and a presumed associated state, rather than factual knowledge of the merits of the software and that, as your second paragraph further demonstrates, is far more a psychology thing (based on decades of precedent of labeling) than an actual thing.

  19. Re:LOL .. 0.9.0? on Bitcoin's Software Gets Security Fixes, New Features · · Score: 1

    Your argument relies on ignoring the "why" and "what" of the change while asking "should I adopt the change", making the question unanswerable.

    Which is different from what people further up in the comment stream have been trying to say, by ignoring the actual merits of the version and instead concentrating on the version number and equating that to a presumed state, how?

    Or is it only special when it's < 1.0 ?

  20. Re:LOL .. 0.9.0? on Bitcoin's Software Gets Security Fixes, New Features · · Score: 2

    Oh I do, but what does it actually tell me?

    Should I be waiting for build 1 of patch level 1751 because clearly patch level 1750 needed 154 builds just to make it out and I don't know if I can trust a patch level that needs that many builds.

    Or better yet, major version 34.0.0.0? Or would that again be bad because first releases are always still going to have residual bugs that don't pop up until millions of people have worked with it?

    I know what it technically tells me, but apparently we're mostly going off of psychology here ("0.x means beta means untrustable!").

  21. Re:actors across series on Interviews: Ask J. Michael Straczynski What You Will · · Score: 1

    Except, of course...
    Ben Browder (Farscape / Stargate SG-1)
    Claudia Black (Farscape / Stargate SG-1)
    Jewel Staite (Firefly / Stargate Atlantis )*
    Morena Baccarin (Firefly / Stargate SG-1 )
    Summer Glau (FireFly / Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles)

    * okay, except for that one episode where she played a Wraith.

    Probably plenty of other examples, those were the ones I knew off my head (I enjoyed all 3 of those franchises very much), and I'm sure plenty of counterexamples. Makes me think it's probably coincidence.

  22. Re:LOL .. 0.9.0? on Bitcoin's Software Gets Security Fixes, New Features · · Score: 2

    Which, in turn, means nothing more than "we think this release is pretty good, but we want everybody to hammer away at it until we can be sure"; which is exactly what happened, and why there was another release. Note that the issue found wasn't nearly as devastating as a myriad of issues surrounding Bitcoin that has nothing to do with the reference client and protocol.

    Perhaps it's time to re-evaluate what version numbers actually mean. Or, as many other developers seem to have done, let version numbers go almost entirely.. hide them from view, number releases by date, etc.

  23. Re:LOL .. 0.9.0? on Bitcoin's Software Gets Security Fixes, New Features · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Do people expect someone to take seriously a piece of software to manage financial transactions with a version like that?

    Sure, why not?

    Apparently we can't take FireFox seriously because it's at version 28(!) (nevermind that Chrome is at 33.0.1750.154 (dude what?)) either.

    So, should everything just be labeled v1.0 eternally (or v2.0 for the people who never trust first releases) based on the psychological effects of a version number?

  24. Re:Hoding a grey and yellow multimeter in my hand on $30K Worth of Multimeters Must Be Destroyed Because They're Yellow · · Score: 1

    the Klein one is clearly orange, not yellow

    By whose definition of what constitutes yellow, and what constitutes orange?

    For example, is this one yellow or orange?
    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...

    What about this one, orange or red?
    http://www.parameters.com.au/i...

    What if the latter is just red enough to constitute orange, but in comparison the former isn't...and thus falls back to being yellow enough to be considered yellow as far as any trade dress claims would go?

    Unfortunately, that's one of the issues at play here.

    ( Note that I don't disagree that it is orange; assuming it's a faithful image, then its hue is almost exactly at 30 degrees on the color wheel. )

  25. Re:To be fair... on $30K Worth of Multimeters Must Be Destroyed Because They're Yellow · · Score: 1

    Excellent, my AC friend! (don't worry, I was an AC once)

    Now go find the trade mark/dress where Voltcraft's color scheme is defined :)

    ( Note that I'm now acknowledging that they do have a trade mark/dress on it - you sounded rather convinced that they do, though. )