Yes, these keypads have been in use for at least 10 years. You press a button to activate the keypad, and it randomly places the digits onto the pad so they're in a different place each time. After you successfully enter your code all of the numbers disappear. It certainly makes it slower to enter your PIN, but it also makes it impossible to surreptitiously determine your PIN.
Given some of Google's recent comments on patents, what is the likelihood that they picked one of the most obviously documented prior art patent ideas they could come up with just to make a point?Just trying to make the point that, "If this gets patented, then clearly ANYTHING can. And that proves that the system is broken."
But doesn't that DRM then destroy your rights granted by the first-sale doctrine? And then it comes down to which law takes precedence: the DMCA, or the right of first sale.
Do any of you law types have any comment on this legal conflict?
I wouldn't call myself an average user - although I'm not a power user either - but I certainly have no idea how much bandwidth I use per month. What is the point in keeping track of the bandwidth if it has absolutely zero impact on my actions or my bill? Maybe when I hear that my ISP is talking about usage-based pricing I'll look into figuring out where I stand, but until then it would be a waste of my time. I'm sure there is some easy way to determine this, but I'd have to do the research to figure out what that is.
It sounds like you should be looking at Silent PC Review instead. They focus more on how you can get a moderately powerful computer without it being obtrusive. Maybe a little bit extreme at times, but always good info.
That's a perfectly reasonable solution. Of course I would never be able to afford a laser-etched stainless steel car instead of a standard painted carbon steel car. Stainless steel is 2.5 to 4 times more expensive than standard carbon steel. Not what I would call a viable solution.
If you look at the link the parent posted ( http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2008/01/03/mn_grotto.jpg ) you can clearly see that the situation shown in the picture is vastly different from what the calculations looked at. Based on what is shown in the picture this was essentially a running long jump for the tiger. There was virtually no elevation involved, especially when you consider that she could easily pull herself up over the top if she was a couple of feet short. That diagram is very enlightening.
That looks an awful lot like a logging footprint that is several years old. If you zoom out a little bit you can see many other similar scars in the vegetation. Although the straight line hills are more interesting to me.
Sorry, I've posted in this thread already so I can't mod you up. But your post is right on the money. All these people talking about encryption are forgetting that storing the data in an independently encrypted way simply isn't in Google's interests. And if people start encrypting everything themselves, as any smart user of the service clearly would if they used it at all, then Google will either find ways to link those users to other services so they can guess which profitable ads to include, or they will simply cancel the service if it isn't making money and isn't leading to something else they do making money.
It may be true that Google wants to be able to read your data to serve ads, but the real question is, how many people would actually use it on all of their data? And will Google go out of their way to prevent encrypted data uploads for the small percentage of intelligent and vocal users who want encryption? My bet is that they don't provide encryption, but that they don't prevent it either.
I mean come on... besides the all-caps speculation, what leads you to believe that this morning's event is in any way connected to your misfortunes?
I have been using credit cards for the past 16 years and I have never once had to cancel a credit card due to fraudulent activity. I am careful about how I use it, but I do use it regularly online with companies that I feel that I can trust. I am also very careful about who I send my info to and how I send it. So you think it's purely chance that within 2 weeks of having my first credit card fraud problem this data is leaked? Really?
1,200 out of some 26m eBay users is a vanishingly small minority anyhow...
So you also think that this "fraudster" just happened to post all 1,200 accounts that they had just before the forum was shut down? [Sarcasm]Yeah, you're probably right. That must be all of the information that got out.[/Sarcasm]
My point was not to try to scare anyone. I explicitly stated that I don't have any direct evidence that it came from this "attack." (I still don't think this was an attack. This is the exposure of data that was obtained in some other way, probably by someone other than the person that posted it.) My point was to warn others that the credit card numbers published on eBay might not have been "correct," but that the "correct" numbers could certainly be in the "wild." And I was also hoping to see if others would chime in that they have recently had problems too, corroborating the credit card hack.
Like other posters have alluded to, I think whoever posted the account info posted them in batches by alphabetical order. He knew he wouldn't be able to get them all uploaded before he was stopped, so he broke it into groups. Given the grouping of the names that I saw in the j's, it has got to be a pretty comprehensive list of user accounts. (All of the j names seemed pretty close together alphabetically speaking, with very few large gaps between the user IDs.)
In response to the comment on him being a phisher: I have no idea how this particular guy got his info, but I can assure that I have not been the victim of a phishing scheme. I keep up on my security info and I do not trust ANYONE on the internet that I have not personally met in the flesh.
I have no incontrovertible proof that it came from eBay, but the credit card that I have on file for eBay was compromised two weeks ago. There were several unauthorized online charges on my account. When it happened I had no way of knowing where the info leaked from. But now, two weeks later, I find out that all of my eBay user account information is available on the internet?!?
I WOULD SAY THAT THIS IS NOT A COINCIDENCE, AND THAT THERE WAS AN ACTUAL MALICIOUS HACKER ATTACK.
If you watch some of the videos related to the one linked above you will see that the person that posted the info to the eBay forums was just trying to get some visibility of the problem that he discovered.
There is nothing in this story about underground utilities. This is about an installation technician drilling a hole into the wall of a house and hitting a wire.
There REALLY is no excuse for this since an AC finder tool is relatively inexpensive and readily available.
Yeah, that sounds like a noble way to help solve the problem with the patent system, but who is going to be doing all of this continuous reviewing and re-reviewing? The problem is that the patent office is already overworked and prone to accepting every patent application that they receive a) for the money and b) because it's faster than actually researching it.
How does your proposal of asking the overworked patent office to do MORE REVIEWS help to alleviate the problem??
If the universities make the entrance exams harder to better reflect the actual knowledge required to be successful in their chosen field of study they won't make as much money. Of course they're not going to stifle their flow of income!
Less storage then a regular size iPod. More than twice the cost of two 8GB iPod nanos. Other than for the sheer sake of proving it can be done, why is this hack impressive again? Well, for one thing, he got you and many thousands of other people talking about it and thinking about it. That's how new things are learned and discovered. Trying new things and learning from them. At least he actually DID something, rather than just questioning why other people do things on/. .
Though, there have been some impressive contributions to the crypto community from [C]hinese researchers recently. They're already ahead of the curve in some fields. Well, if you lived in China what technology would you work on first and hardest? There's a reason that they have good crypto there.
. . . This isn't anything new and it will probably never go away as long as photography is an effective medium of communication. That may be true, but it certainly doesn't make it "journalism." It makes it "art" in the eyes of the photographer that fabricates the scene. There is no truth or reality left in it.
Yes, higher octane fuels allow higher compression ratios. These higher compression ratios are allowed because higher octane fuels are less prone to auto-ignition because they burn more slowly in the chamber. So in theory a high compression engine could be tuned to be more fuel efficient than an engine with a lower compression ratio, that is typically not the case. Typically, high compression ratio engines are tuned for power (e.g. expensive sports cars) because the people that are willing to pay a premium for the high octane fuel are typically not the people interested in maximum fuel economy or minimum emissions.
So, all things being equal, higher octane fuels burn slower, and therefore cooler. How the engineers actually tune the engine will determine whether this property is used to increase power, decrease emissions, or increase mileage.
This is an incredibly naive take on Ethanol consumption. The higher octane does have an effect. That effect is to burn the gasoline hotter and more completely, thus extracting energy than would have otherwise been extracted from a lower octane fuel.
Higher octane fuels actually decrease the temperature and speed of the fuel burn, thereby reducing knock, or preignition. There is virtually no difference in the total energy between a high octane and a low octane fuel. The difference is just in how readily the fuels are ignited.
I thought it was odd that Google did not simply have a list of cities that are active too. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the data is not 100% reliable, so they did not want to publish that a city was available and have it not work due to a problem on the city's side.
BTW, I am in Phoenix, AZ and the traffic information is available here.
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Yes, these keypads have been in use for at least 10 years. You press a button to activate the keypad, and it randomly places the digits onto the pad so they're in a different place each time. After you successfully enter your code all of the numbers disappear. It certainly makes it slower to enter your PIN, but it also makes it impossible to surreptitiously determine your PIN.
Or maybe I'm just being entirely too naive.
Do any of you law types have any comment on this legal conflict?
I wouldn't call myself an average user - although I'm not a power user either - but I certainly have no idea how much bandwidth I use per month. What is the point in keeping track of the bandwidth if it has absolutely zero impact on my actions or my bill? Maybe when I hear that my ISP is talking about usage-based pricing I'll look into figuring out where I stand, but until then it would be a waste of my time. I'm sure there is some easy way to determine this, but I'd have to do the research to figure out what that is.
It sounds like you should be looking at Silent PC Review instead. They focus more on how you can get a moderately powerful computer without it being obtrusive. Maybe a little bit extreme at times, but always good info.
That's a perfectly reasonable solution. Of course I would never be able to afford a laser-etched stainless steel car instead of a standard painted carbon steel car. Stainless steel is 2.5 to 4 times more expensive than standard carbon steel. Not what I would call a viable solution.
If you look at the link the parent posted ( http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2008/01/03/mn_grotto.jpg ) you can clearly see that the situation shown in the picture is vastly different from what the calculations looked at. Based on what is shown in the picture this was essentially a running long jump for the tiger. There was virtually no elevation involved, especially when you consider that she could easily pull herself up over the top if she was a couple of feet short. That diagram is very enlightening.
That looks an awful lot like a logging footprint that is several years old. If you zoom out a little bit you can see many other similar scars in the vegetation. Although the straight line hills are more interesting to me.
Sorry, I've posted in this thread already so I can't mod you up. But your post is right on the money. All these people talking about encryption are forgetting that storing the data in an independently encrypted way simply isn't in Google's interests. And if people start encrypting everything themselves, as any smart user of the service clearly would if they used it at all, then Google will either find ways to link those users to other services so they can guess which profitable ads to include, or they will simply cancel the service if it isn't making money and isn't leading to something else they do making money.
It may be true that Google wants to be able to read your data to serve ads, but the real question is, how many people would actually use it on all of their data? And will Google go out of their way to prevent encrypted data uploads for the small percentage of intelligent and vocal users who want encryption? My bet is that they don't provide encryption, but that they don't prevent it either.
I have been using credit cards for the past 16 years and I have never once had to cancel a credit card due to fraudulent activity. I am careful about how I use it, but I do use it regularly online with companies that I feel that I can trust. I am also very careful about who I send my info to and how I send it. So you think it's purely chance that within 2 weeks of having my first credit card fraud problem this data is leaked? Really?
So you also think that this "fraudster" just happened to post all 1,200 accounts that they had just before the forum was shut down? [Sarcasm]Yeah, you're probably right. That must be all of the information that got out.[/Sarcasm]
My point was not to try to scare anyone. I explicitly stated that I don't have any direct evidence that it came from this "attack." (I still don't think this was an attack. This is the exposure of data that was obtained in some other way, probably by someone other than the person that posted it.) My point was to warn others that the credit card numbers published on eBay might not have been "correct," but that the "correct" numbers could certainly be in the "wild." And I was also hoping to see if others would chime in that they have recently had problems too, corroborating the credit card hack.
Like other posters have alluded to, I think whoever posted the account info posted them in batches by alphabetical order. He knew he wouldn't be able to get them all uploaded before he was stopped, so he broke it into groups. Given the grouping of the names that I saw in the j's, it has got to be a pretty comprehensive list of user accounts. (All of the j names seemed pretty close together alphabetically speaking, with very few large gaps between the user IDs.)
In response to the comment on him being a phisher: I have no idea how this particular guy got his info, but I can assure that I have not been the victim of a phishing scheme. I keep up on my security info and I do not trust ANYONE on the internet that I have not personally met in the flesh.
I have no incontrovertible proof that it came from eBay, but the credit card that I have on file for eBay was compromised two weeks ago. There were several unauthorized online charges on my account. When it happened I had no way of knowing where the info leaked from. But now, two weeks later, I find out that all of my eBay user account information is available on the internet?!?
I WOULD SAY THAT THIS IS NOT A COINCIDENCE, AND THAT THERE WAS AN ACTUAL MALICIOUS HACKER ATTACK.
If you watch some of the videos related to the one linked above you will see that the person that posted the info to the eBay forums was just trying to get some visibility of the problem that he discovered.
There is nothing in this story about underground utilities. This is about an installation technician drilling a hole into the wall of a house and hitting a wire.
There REALLY is no excuse for this since an AC finder tool is relatively inexpensive and readily available.
Yeah, that sounds like a noble way to help solve the problem with the patent system, but who is going to be doing all of this continuous reviewing and re-reviewing? The problem is that the patent office is already overworked and prone to accepting every patent application that they receive a) for the money and b) because it's faster than actually researching it.
How does your proposal of asking the overworked patent office to do MORE REVIEWS help to alleviate the problem??
If the universities make the entrance exams harder to better reflect the actual knowledge required to be successful in their chosen field of study they won't make as much money. Of course they're not going to stifle their flow of income!
Yes, higher octane fuels allow higher compression ratios. These higher compression ratios are allowed because higher octane fuels are less prone to auto-ignition because they burn more slowly in the chamber. So in theory a high compression engine could be tuned to be more fuel efficient than an engine with a lower compression ratio, that is typically not the case. Typically, high compression ratio engines are tuned for power (e.g. expensive sports cars) because the people that are willing to pay a premium for the high octane fuel are typically not the people interested in maximum fuel economy or minimum emissions.
So, all things being equal, higher octane fuels burn slower, and therefore cooler. How the engineers actually tune the engine will determine whether this property is used to increase power, decrease emissions, or increase mileage.
I thought it was odd that Google did not simply have a list of cities that are active too. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the data is not 100% reliable, so they did not want to publish that a city was available and have it not work due to a problem on the city's side.
BTW, I am in Phoenix, AZ and the traffic information is available here.
I am on T-Mobile service with a Blackberry and the Google Maps with Traffic works just fine on my phone.
And I do agree that this is not the best thing to use IN the car, but could be very useful prior to trips.