User: Laerien

Tracking cell phone locations in real-time

On: Judge Nixes Warrantless Cell Phone Location Data

Gov't has been tracking cell phone locations without a warrant for years. There are quite a few cases on the books, and they represent only a tiny portion of those that are requested and denied. Check out this law review 'recent development' article from 2006, back when they were first doing this.

Not so Sekret

On: Mac OS X Secretly Cripples Non-Apple Software

Apple apparently is terrible at keeping secrets, since they thoroughly http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Performance/Conceptual/Drawing/Articles/FlushingContent.htmldocument the performance issue, explain why it exists, and layout ways to avoid it.

If your program displays animated content, because it is a game or other multimedia-based application, your code should avoid updating your window content faster than the screen refresh rate. Drawing content to your local window buffer and flushing that content to the screen at more than 30 frames per second is usually a waste of CPU time. Most users cannot perceive updates at rates greater than 30 frames per second, so flushing more frequently is rarely needed. Changes introduced in Mac OS X v10.4 to eliminate visual "tearing" and other display artifacts are also likely to cause performance problems in code that flushes too frequently. . . . To avoid performance problems, you should never draw or flush your window buffers faster than the screen refresh rate. If you typically draw your content and then immediately flush it to the screen, you can use timers to notify your code when it is time to draw. Simply set a timer to fire at the same frequency as the screen refresh rate and have it call your drawing routine. As Vladimir points out, this is no conspiracy.

Re:Here we go again...

On: First Anti-Phishing Law Enacted in California

I couldn't find any cases where someone was prosecuted for phishing, but I did find a case where Associated Bank-Corp. sued Earthlink for errantly labeling http://www.associatedbank.com/ as a phishing site when it really was the bank's official website. Earthlink's anti-phishing tool redirected those attempting to navigate to the site to the following message:

POTENTIALLY FRAUDULENT WEB SITE ALERT generated by ScamBlocker from EarthLink You have been redirected to this page by ScamBlocker from EarthLink. The Web address you requested is on our list of potentially Dangerous and Fraudulent Web Sites. Those who visit the site may be at high risk for identity theft or other financial losses. Please do not continue to this potentially risky site. Associated Bank-Corp. v. Earthlink, Inc. 2005 WL 2240952, *1 (W.D.Wis.) (W.D.Wis.,2005)

Humorously, you are more likely to be sued for trying to stop phishing than you are for phishing.

Distribution Restriction

On: U.S. Army Guide to Code Breaking

This field manual (no. 34.40.2) seems to have a Distribution Restriction placed on it as of March 5, 1990. The index page of the manual features a prominent warning about its restricted nature and a banner at the bottom of the page reads, "For Official Use Only".

Is this document classified or are these just standard warnings with no teeth? Is our dissemination of this 15-yr-old document criminal?

Re:Gmail, you know what to do

On: Sophistication in Web Applications?

Links have gone stale! Bloody hell - thought maybe I would join the rest of the world and get a gmail account. Please invite me now before I get stuck with lam3name381382@gmail.com! Fewer and fewer invites these days - checkout http://isnoop.net/gmailomatic.phpGmail Invite Spooler to see my plight. shannonskipper@knology.net (woot - 1meg limit)

Re:Picture wrong.

On: iMac LCD Impostors

I agree - the picture is of the Profile3. The heading "imac imposter" is quite ridiculous! The Profile has been around for years! If anything the imac is the imposter. In any case the Profile4 is an enhanced Profile3 and looks nothing like the new imac...