As a test on various distros, I ran
iconv -l |grep 2022 |grep -i cn
and it listed ISO-2022-CN-EXT// and ISO2022CNEXT// before I made any changes. After editing the modules and running iconvconfig the command no longer showed those charsets.
This was handy since the alma8 has a /usr/lib64/gconv/gconv-modules file but the file to edit was /usr/lib64/gconv/gconv-modules.d/gconv-modules-extra.conf
i would be too worried that it would get triggered by accident or that someone would pretend to be me and hit the "panic button". i could imagine being on vacation and suddenly being locked out from all my stuff. it's bad enough when my bank card gets flagged.
i would be a bit worried about accidental passwords getting into the syslog. i have typed passwords out of habit when they were not required or before a remote system responds only to have the password end up as a bash command. i then have to go into the .bash_history file and remove them.
ground patrol cars or aerial surveillance require a person to operate them. GPS tracking allows for tracking many targets at once and then sifting through the data to find "bad guys".
the added costs of having a person track a target means more care is taken to avoid false positives. the person doing the tracking can also dis-regard irrelevant data that an automated system might erroneously use.
imagine some program that automatically sifted through a source of ubiquitous GPS data which actually did catch 100% of all terrorist attempts in New York in 2010 (the Times Square bombing attempt). what if that system meant 100 false positives were added to the no-fly-list because they drove on street X on date Y followed by street Z within 2 days (or some other such algorithm) when (if) someone asks about these no-fly-list additions they are simply told that the suspects exhibited behavior that was consistent with the Times Square bomber... if you are not a terrorist, you have nothing to hide!
i think it says more about how simple real humans are when they interact with each other. as limited as Eliza is, it has worked many times. how many times a day have you had face-to-face interactions with people that are simply canned responses. i remember keeping a phone call going with high-school girlfriend by randomly responding with one of the following : "uh-huh", "yeah" or "really".
i agree with you that preserving anonymity is a valid goal. spending 20-30 minutes on the phone is not how one should run something like a whistle-blower's hotline.
i don't agree with the idea that you are "...being kind and generous by not exploiting...".
as i understand it, they were doing experiments to watch how neutrinos change between "electron", "muon" and "tau" flavors. the timing of when the neutrino was sent from cern and viewed by the experiment was required to match what the neutrino was before and after.
pick up a Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard and a compatible mouse (like the M305) and they can both use the same USB receiver. plus, it's a solar powered wireless keyboard!
* you'll need to bind the mouse and keyboard to the same receiver on a windows machine before you connect it to your linux box until linux unifying support is available.
it goes without saying that a 17 year old series is more well known than a new game. on the other hand, i have never referred to "The Elder Scrolls" as just "Scrolls". i've called it "Morrowind" or "Oblivion" and i'll probably refer to the new game as just "Skyrim". if i saw a game that was just called "Scrolls" i would not confuse it with Bethesda's games.
there might not be 17 trillion songs, but you aren't limited to the first 4 words of the song. there might be 100-300 words per song and you can pick your starting word anywhere you like.
1) the bad guys found a website who's owner had the password as 'password' and set it up to receive phishing scam data.
2) the good guy found the phishing site and using the same 'password' he changed the phishing HTML, personally called the people who had been scammed so far and then deleted the data.
if you call #1 a hack then #2 has to be a counterhack
i was trying to figure out what the patents were for as well. i dug around a bit and found a description from when Microsoft was suing Motorola for using Android:
"...synchronizing email, calendars and contacts, scheduling meetings, and notifying applications of changes in signal strength and battery power."
big concert promoters could point to all the flickr pages with pics of their shows from iphones and threaten to sue apple unless apple implements a means to disable taking pics at a concert. this is very similar to the code that allows DVRs to shut off analogue outputs when playing new release movies (Selectable Output Control)
* i don't agree with either of these.
robo calls would be a bad idea. people lose phone numbers when they move or go away to school. an email token is the best solution. if you are in the subset that lost your PSN email account then you can call sony to sort out some other method of verifying your identity.
and it listed ISO-2022-CN-EXT// and ISO2022CNEXT// before I made any changes. After editing the modules and running iconvconfig the command no longer showed those charsets.
This was handy since the alma8 has a /usr/lib64/gconv/gconv-modules file but the file to edit was /usr/lib64/gconv/gconv-modules.d/gconv-modules-extra.conf