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I had the idea of activating every phone for a split second every few minutes, like a handshake.
This would serve to detonate IED's prematurely, hopefully.
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At least once during the iraq war the US Airforce allegedly did that; using an EW aircraft to mass dial thousands of phones/second. Most variants of the story claim we blew up a few bomb factories and that the enemy went back to hard wired detonation systems afterward. The latter should be independently verifiable.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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"That is replaceable with a solder gun a few minutes of time?"
I consider myself pretty handy with a soldering iron, and I seriously doubt I have the skills to open up & replace a chip on the tiny printed circuit board of a modern smartphone.
I'm not saying it isn't possible. But if you need a shop with skilled technicians to perform physical replacement of a chip, as well as a supply of said chips which presumably you must buy from the manufacturer, then you've definitely succeeded in lowering the immediate value of a stolen phone by quite a bit. This is not something that could be done by any petty thieves, so it requires infrastucture, money, organization, skilled workers, and so on.
Not saying it couldn't happen, but at that point, you might as well just make knockoff phones.
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Ennis Ray Lynch, Jr. wrote: Who kills the phone? The consumer? Or the government that wants to shut down comms in an area? Seems like a good weapon.
Weapon? Naw. Seems like good potential amusement for a hacker though.
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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ahmed zahmed wrote: The kill switch will not only delete the data, it will render the phone useless. That is, it will "kill" the phone.
I can't wait until this is added to all phones. We can be absolutely positive that the code will be perfect and will never accidentally delete everything on your phone and brick it. Or when some intrepid fellow sends the "kill" command to an entire network. I'm also 100% sure that the min wage worker will never type the number in wrong and brick someone else's phone accidentally.
Because it sounds like a great idea, I'm sure it is for the children. More likely it is so politicians can erase their phone or their mistress's phone to prevent those pics and saucy texts from leaking. 
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Two Words: Government Control.
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It's so the government can control communications. That's ALL it's for.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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I'd vote for public-access kill switches on bloggers and marketing morons.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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First,
I love the idea, and want it. here is what I understand:
1) It disables the phone, until the phone is brought into a service center, and the person verifies they are the proper owner. Then they allow the phone to be on the network again, and function. (Does not permanently destroy)
2) It Blanks the phone, so your personal data is not in there. (but in my case, most can be retrieved once I sign back into the phone and sync with google). I will probably lose my high scores on sudoku and 2048 
3) It Locks the phone from being usable
4) It serves as a STRONG deterrent to being stolen. Who wants a phone, that within a couple of hours will be useless?
5) I strongly believe that part of the reason is so that our government can disable a bunch of phones for Cliven Bundy supports, just to piss them off...
6) I also feel that if Senators, or Congressman are going to be caught, they will order their phones zapped, even while they are sitting in a police evidence locker...
Now, what will happen?
1) Some smart kids will show people that they put the phone into a foil bag upon stealing it.
2) They only open the phone inside of a radio free zone
3) They hack the phone with software, and disable the feature through some kind of DEBUG mode that the stupid phone company left enabled
4) At least the phone will be usable, with all of the data on it still... Although the communications will be disabled, until they can figure a way to change the chips (as someone else mentioned... very difficult).
It will again give us ANOTHER chance to give up freedom in exchange for FEELING more secure.
As long as we know, we know what to avoid.
I like the idea of wiping the phone, AND FORCING IT to send us it's GPS Coordinates when it does it!
This way they can actually show us
"Your Phone has been disabled... When you find it upstairs in the spare bedroom on the dresser to NE corner of the room, where you have at least 1 unregistered gun... Bring it in to get it re-enabled for a small fee!"
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Unique identifiers on phones can be changed by flashing, but yeah, you're right, it should be trivial for network operators to block such devices from being used on their networks. I think that a kill switch is a good idea, but it could be abused by governments or resourceful hackers.
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It is trivial for networks to not allow the phones onto the network, yes, but that's only part of the question. You mention deleting data, which is the rest of the issue. The existence of a mere network identifier doesn't make it possible to actually delete anything or prevent the phone from booting up, reading data, using WiFi, and so on, it only works to keep the phone from working as a phone.
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Massive Nearby Spiral Galaxy NGC 2841 [^].
This APOD neatly illustrates the vastness of space: Quote: A mere 46 million light-years distant
Is that all? 
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair.
Those who seek perfection will only find imperfection
nils illegitimus carborundum
me, me, me
me, in pictures
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mark merrens wrote: Is that all?
That's only 303 quintillion miles!
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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I just discovered that CodeProject lets you rate your own articles. I just rated my new article[^] a 5 and gave myself 40 points.
Is this by design or is this a bug?
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Post this in the Suggestions and Bugs forum.
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He will, just as soon as he's done voting for his own articles. 
Will Rogers never met me.
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I did and it seems it is allowed by design. Saves us time creating sock puppet accounts and upvoting 
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Not much different from creating a sock puppet and doing so. :shrug:
You'll never get very far if all you do is follow instructions.
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It would take a lot of effort to get a sock puppet to the point to where it could award you 40 points.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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But it would be easy for 4 sock puppets to give you 40 points.
What is this talk of release? I do not release software. My software escapes leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality assurance people in its wake.
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There's experience talking.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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