Slashdot Mirror

This was a project for a machine-learning course, and it uses a really simple k-nearest neighbor approach, so it could be improved quite a bit. Keystroke biometrics are nothing new. They are rather cool -- but not when you apply them to locking down content.

Now, using this biometric to "protect" music seems insanely lame, not because it can't be accurate, but because keystroke biometrics, like all other biometrics, *can* be rather easily compromised when used as access tokens. Recording my own keystroke pattern, providing a "re-player", and then distributing it on the net with all my mp3s would be fairly simple.

Retinal scans? Same problem. It's optical. It doesn't take long to figure out how to produce a copied image of someone's retina that would trick a scanner. Even if the scanner uses some of it's own tricks (measuring refraction, etc), it all ultimately becomes a stream of bits, and it just isn't that hard to replicate a stream of bits to an application... So it all boils down to how hard the case is glued together between the scanner's input and its encryption encoder.

The only thing any of these biometrics does is *increase* the difficulty, which *is* a deterent. Of course, adding this crap to music downloads is even more of a deterent from adopting it at all, so don't worry -- market forces will doom it anyway.

for those not "up to speed' on this issue, here is a quick summarry:

A controversy is presently raging in certain physics journals and conferences over whether Einstein's speed of light barrier has been breached by light itself. In particular, Prof. Günther Nimtz and his group at the University of Cologne, Germany have published results showing that they used microwaves to transmit what might be interpreted as a signal, Mozart's 40th Symphony, over a path length of 11.4 centimeters at 4.7 times the speed of light.

The work of the Nimtz group raises the question of whether Einsteinian causality has in fact been violated and has spawned a controversy. The players in it, as is characteristic of careful scientists, have engaged in a careful tableau of discussion of various definitions of "velocity" and "causality" that skirt any claim of the fall of Einsteinian causality. One contingent has suggested that the FTL speed in the Nimtz experiment, like that of the Chiao group, might result from time-varying transmission probability in the barrier waveguide. The other argues that the filter advance of the Chiao group is peculiar to their filter type and does not apply to the Nimtz results.

What is meant by a signal has also been a matter of debate. For example, Mozart's 40th Symphony, while it is certainly a signal in some sense, does not contain modulation envelopes or switching edges that rise in 80 picoseconds and could thus place Einsteinian causality under stress by conspicuously arriving too early. Further, since any increase in barrier thickness brings with it a corresponding and exponentially increasing attenuation of any signal, it is not feasible to increase the barrier thickness to distances large enough that the causal implications of a constant barrier transit time become more apparent.

as a final note, there were those who also argued that Mozart's 40th Symphony was not information in the first place, and so relativity was not violated.

This brings a certain smile to the face, depending on you musical tastes.

BYU start a similar study earlier this year. It's a race! ;-)

The Open Content web site has a link to a page of open content works available on the net at http://wiley.byu.edu/opencontent/

David E. Weekly

There are some ultra orthodox religious conservatives in Utah, and considering that the state legislature is about 70% Republican, with so much control that the Democrats can't even stop a bill even if it is vetoed by the Governor. This tends to make legislative activity more like political platform actions, and some people have even suggested that most state legislative action actually occurs during the state Republican party convention, or at least during the party legislative caucus meetings.

Even with all of that kept in mind, it is still surprising how much erotic literature can be found in paper form, even at public libraries in a very conservative state like Utah. And don't think that the people in Utah are technically illiterate. Senator Bob Bennett chairs the Senate Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem (The Y2K Comittee), in fact he helped push the formation of the comittee in the Senate. Utah is also home to tech companies like Novell, Caldera, Thiokol(the makers of the space shuttle booster rockets), Iomega, and many others. To say that Utah is being backward in their decisions is not really taking notice of what happened. The state legislature took the considered opinions of many tech professionals, together with the screaming opinions of a strong conservative religious constituancy and came up with the legislation that could be considered "the will of the people" in a representative democracy.

This isn't to say that this is a one-way street either. If it turns out that net filtering will keep out politically sensitive sites (which it does), it will eventually prove to be a faulty technology.

There are some ultra orthodox religious conservatives in Utah, and considering that the state legislature is about 70% Republican, with so much control that the Democrats can't even stop a bill even if it is vetoed by the Governor. This tends to make legislative activity more like political platform actions, and some people have even suggested that most state legislative action actually occurs during the state Republican party convention, or at least during the party legislative caucus meetings.

Even with all of that kept in mind, it is still surprising how much erotic literature can be found in paper form, even at public libraries in a very conservative state like Utah. And don't think that the people in Utah are technically illiterate. Senator Bob Bennett chairs the Senate Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem (The Y2K Comittee), in fact he helped push the formation of the comittee in the Senate. Utah is also home to tech companies like Novell, Caldera, Thiokol(the makers of the space shuttle booster rockets), Iomega, and many others. To say that Utah is being backward in their decisions is not really taking notice of what happened. The state legislature took the considered opinions of many tech professionals, together with the screaming opinions of a strong conservative religious constituancy and came up with the legislation that could be considered "the will of the people" in a representative democracy.

This isn't to say that this is a one-way street either. If it turns out that net filtering will keep out politically sensitive sites (which it does), it will eventually prove to be a faulty technology.

There are some ultra orthodox religious conservatives in Utah, and considering that the state legislature is about 70% Republican, with so much control that the Democrats can't even stop a bill even if it is vetoed by the Governor. This tends to make legislative activity more like political platform actions, and some people have even suggested that most state legislative action actually occurs during the state Republican party convention, or at least during the party legislative caucus meetings.

Even with all of that kept in mind, it is still surprising how much erotic literature can be found in paper form, even at public libraries in a very conservative state like Utah. And don't think that the people in Utah are technically illiterate. Senator Bob Bennett chairs the Senate Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem (The Y2K Comittee), in fact he helped push the formation of the comittee in the Senate. Utah is also home to tech companies like Novell, Caldera, Thiokol(the makers of the space shuttle booster rockets), Iomega, and many others. To say that Utah is being backward in their decisions is not really taking notice of what happened. The state legislature took the considered opinions of many tech professionals, together with the screaming opinions of a strong conservative religious constituancy and came up with the legislation that could be considered "the will of the people" in a representative democracy.

This isn't to say that this is a one-way street either. If it turns out that net filtering will keep out politically sensitive sites (which it does), it will eventually prove to be a faulty technology.

it broke 16-bit prime codes in less than 0.64 seconds,

Umm, this doesn't say much about the algorithm itself. (See below) Besides, I bet that even bruteforce-factoring a 16-bit prime is faster...

By complexity I meant how the running time grows as a function of the input size, regardless of the speed of the processor you are using. I don't want to scare you with maths or anything, but a place to grasp the idea of the classes of computational complexity would be for example the slide show in here. The concept is simple, really. Scroll back and forth the slides and grab the interesting bits. Knowing thy Ordo is very useful, and helps prevent a lot of unnecessary head/wall-interaction involving large amounts of kinetic energy.

Regardless of whether your algorithm works or not, I would be interested in seeing the source code, if at all possible.

Could you please at least post the inner loop to the web page?

If you can find one of these, they make a pretty nice ergonomic keyboard for under $20. You just have to to this if you want the delete, insert, pgup, and pgdown to be in the right place.

The Office is asking for comments from "all interested parties, including representatives of copyright owners, educational institutions, libraries and archives, scholars, researchers and members of the public." Electronic submissions are preferred, and can be submitted to "1201@loc.gov". Important instructions on the format of these submissions are included HERE

It is likely that the "flier campaign" of 2600 has largely failed, not because it was a bad idea, but because the general populace just doesn't understand or care. We need to take our case to the decision makers and those in power who can effect change. Influencing the Copyright Office's rule-making body is a way in which we can be effective. Let's make our voices heard. Be assured that the MPAA and DVD-CCA are making their cases before the Copyright office.

DO IT NOW!

The Office is asking for comments from "all interested parties, including representatives of copyright owners, educational institutions, libraries and archives, scholars, researchers and members of the public." Electronic submissions are preferred, and can be submitted to "1201@loc.gov". Important instructions on the format of these submissions are included HERE

It is likely that the "flier campaign" of 2600 has largely failed, not because it was a bad idea, but because the general populace just doesn't understand or care. We need to take our case to the decision makers and those in power who can effect change. Influencing the Copyright Office's rule-making body is a way in which we can be effective. Let's make our voices heard. Be assured that the MPAA and DVD-CCA are making their cases before the Copyright office.

DO IT NOW!

The GPL is not really appropriate for documents (see below). View the OpenContent licence for a more appropriate document.

The OpenContent Content Database (I love that name!) lists the few documents that are known to have been released under the licence.

From the OpenContent FAQ:

Why do we need the OPL?

Computer software can already be made free for public consumption and improvement by distribution under one of several Free Software licenses as mentioned above. If you're developing executable code with instructional potential, please consider licensing it as "Free Software" so that it can both be a part of the Bazaar development cycle and freely accessible to everyone.

Other Content (Learning Objects) such as graphics, images, sound bytes, video clips, models, lecture notes, tutorials, HOW-TO's and anything else that can be "referenced during technology supported learning" can not be released under these licenses because they are written specifically for computer software. The OpenContent License has been created to provide instructional designers and content specialists the same benefits, protections and assurances programmers gain from Free Software licenses. The OPL (pronounced "opal") is always open for comment. This version draws inspiration (and some verbiage) from the GPL and Debian's Social Contract.

I put my solution on a web page. (I want to see if I can get SlashDotted ). However, I recommend that you verify the answer. It seems to have worked out, and all of the answers are grammatically correct, but I may have messed up.

The spoiler

Have fun! And let me know if I made any mistakes.