Slashdot Mirror

Re: recording the transactions

The core perspectives design supports this; we're in the middle of implementing it. If you read the Perspectives paper (it's fairly readable for anyone with a moderate technical background), section 5 (Detecting Malicious Notaries) discusses exactly how you can have other notaries log the observations made by the rest of the network. It's on the list of things to add to the Firefox plugin for the next major version.

(I linked to the HTML version of the paper; the PDF version is prettier. :)

Re: recording the transactions

The core perspectives design supports this; we're in the middle of implementing it. If you read the Perspectives paper (it's fairly readable for anyone with a moderate technical background), section 5 (Detecting Malicious Notaries) discusses exactly how you can have other notaries log the observations made by the rest of the network. It's on the list of things to add to the Firefox plugin for the next major version.

(I linked to the HTML version of the paper; the PDF version is prettier. :)

Re: recording the transactions

The core perspectives design supports this; we're in the middle of implementing it. If you read the Perspectives paper (it's fairly readable for anyone with a moderate technical background), section 5 (Detecting Malicious Notaries) discusses exactly how you can have other notaries log the observations made by the rest of the network. It's on the list of things to add to the Firefox plugin for the next major version.

(I linked to the HTML version of the paper; the PDF version is prettier. :)

No, it would need to be in place before the moment that the self-signed cert is first reported to the notaries, if the functionality of reporting such mismatches were enabled, which it apparently is not by default at least now.

What makes you think it isn't?

A client can automatically make a secure connection to one of several publicly available "network notary servers" located around the world. These servers tell the client:

      1. What key does the server see for host.domain.com right now?
      2. What keys has the server seen in the past for host.domain.com ?

[Perspectives homepage]

oh my, I see what you're saying if thinking about a client PC with ODBC connections to a database, and assuming enough access rights gaining database schema and downloading data.

      I've seen remote corporate PC's where we did have them access with a client program via ODBC, but I can't imagine any corporate software server system that operates that way. There's nothing between you and any of your PC's out there to stop any ODBC access if the client apps are hitting tables directly. You might as well just dump your database out in the street and let anyone have it.

      I expect any kind of corporate software like a reservations system to be view only, where the processing of database access and business logic is taking place on the server and the data sent to a PC for view and data entry, selection, etc.

      We know of course a web app would work this way, but I'm assuming a Windows client program for worst case. The problem is with the term client server. Look at this white paper from Carnegie Mellon http://www.sei.cmu.edu/str/descriptions/clientserver_body.html and see the problems with client server, and those are just performance problems, not lack of security because they speak of operating on an intranet network, as is typical.

      Any kind of serving like a reservations system would be done with a three tier system, and the database access is not done from a PC. There's just socketing for messaging to populate the screen and send back user selections/entries.

      I just can't imagine client server being used for a system of that size though. There were hundreds of Best Western Hotels. And even on a smaller scale, I can't imagine it for performance and security reasons.

      So that's why I wasn't thinking along your lines at all. But it is a good point.

  rd

There's another way that this can fail. Here's a hint: the URL to install the Perspectives plugin is http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~perspectives/Perspectives.xpi

People might be interested in a Firefox Extension we have created at Carnegie Mellon: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~perspectives/ Perspectives uses network probing from a set of semi-trusted "network notaries" to allow the browser to determine if a self-signed/expired/mismatched is valid. If so, it can automatically override the annoying FF warning pages. We welcome all feedback!

Someone did: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~perspectives/.

I found a firefox add-on that makes the browser behave a bit more rationally called perspectives: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~perspectives/

Thanks to your link I literally fried my graphics card :-(

I downloaded a program from one of the sites linked there, I think it was this but I am not willing to run it again on my replacement card to confirm

Takeo Kanade's lab at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute did this in the mid 90's...

Takeo Kanade's lab at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute did this in the mid 90's...

Mostly. The "unsuspend their account" is really a counter-notification, and it works on all websites. The thing that's intended to stop misuse of the DMCA is that takedown notifications and counter-notifications are done under penalty of perjury, and that if the accused believes they're in the right, that the default state before a court hearing is that the content stays up (because of the three steps 1) takedown notice, 2) counter-notice, 3) accuser files a lawsuit, #1 and #2 are very quick, so if it's ultimately headed to #3, the content is only taken offline for the brief time between #1 and #2).

http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thompson.pdf

What if you can't even trust your compiler? At some point, even with fully open, GPL-compliant software, there is some point you just have to trust someone else to not jack you.

That is an excellent paper. If you have not read it, please do.

I was thinking about the very problem of trusting your compiler, and the only thing I could come up with is building one from an open assembler. You would need a single (very public) file containing the base executable. This could be small enough that it could be hand disassembled and verified with a hex dump on any system. You would then feed it a table of menmonics and the equivalent instructions, followed by the code for a more powerful compiler. Since all that would be open source, you could build a system that could be verified. (There could be versions of the initial assembler made for different computers, so you could build your base compiler on, say, an Atari 600XL, or a Commodore 64.)

http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thompson.pdf

What if you can't even trust your compiler? At some point, even with fully open, GPL-compliant software, there is some point you just have to trust someone else to not jack you.

Another school that has a Cobol course is Carngie Mellon University. It's called Introduction to Business Programming.

http://is.hss.cmu.edu/index.php?p=news&s=news&t=News%20%26%20Events

This isn't true, and I have the evidence to back it. Read this paper from Carnegie Mellon. An excerpt:

In 1995, the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) began an effort to bring more women into its undergraduate computer science (CS) program. At that time, just 7% (7 out of 96) of entering freshman computer science majors at Carnegie Mellon were women. Five years later, the percentage of women in the entering class had increased fivefold. In 1999, women were 38% of the incoming first-year computer science class (50 out of 130)2 ; in the fall of 2000, approximately 40% of the entering class were women.

I saw the woman responsible for making this change speak. She described that the way that they made that change in computer science enrollment was by focusing on changing perspective and creating a community where women felt comfortable being part of the program.

By looking at the numbers, it seems that worked.

All this is a lot like what Johnny did with the Wii-mote. He effectively turned the Wii (aka OLD technology by this point) into a tracker so he could manipulate items. He even used a screen to make images appear 3-D. In fact, his system is a lot more like Minority Report because, iirc, Cruise was touching a kind of screen, moving pictures and images across it, not hanging in mid-air.

Does anyone know if there exists any research on this?

The parent is referring to Moire patterns (see here, but how about an analog to this, like a specially "anti-digital-encoder"-encoder, such that when the film is re-encoded (or compressed) with DivX, Xvid, mp4, etc, it will generate heavy artifacting, but won't modify the image as a human eye would see it. Or even more advanced, something to fool the camera's CCD directly. Not IR beacuse as someone posted already, an IR cutoff filter would prevent this.

I know it's not the same, but there's already a way to generate visual patterns visible to an optical device, but not to the naked eye, like the thesis-related project of Johnny Chung Lee (look under "Moveable Interactive Projected Displays Using Projector Based Tracking").

See Koopman's paper 32-bit cyclic redundancy codes for Internet applications [ieee.org] for some better ideas.

Free, non-payware preprint version, enjoy!

(Found in about a minute via Google)

Hrm, better links:
News release
Homepage story

He is survived by his wife, Jai, and three children: Chloe, Dylan and Logan. The family requests that donations on his behalf be directed to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, 2141 Rosecrans Ave., Suite 7000, El Segundo, CA 90245, or to Carnegie Mellons Randy Pausch Memorial Fund, which the university will use primarily to support continued work on the Alice project.

Hrm, better links:
News release
Homepage story

He is survived by his wife, Jai, and three children: Chloe, Dylan and Logan. The family requests that donations on his behalf be directed to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, 2141 Rosecrans Ave., Suite 7000, El Segundo, CA 90245, or to Carnegie Mellons Randy Pausch Memorial Fund, which the university will use primarily to support continued work on the Alice project.

Hrm, better links:
News release
Homepage story

He is survived by his wife, Jai, and three children: Chloe, Dylan and Logan. The family requests that donations on his behalf be directed to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, 2141 Rosecrans Ave., Suite 7000, El Segundo, CA 90245, or to Carnegie Mellons Randy Pausch Memorial Fund, which the university will use primarily to support continued work on the Alice project.

http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/beyond/2008/summer/an-enduring-legacy.shtml

O RLY?

Never is too strong of word methinks.

http://www-hep.phys.cmu.edu/cms/PICT_ARCH/lhc_map.gif

Its about 90% under France.

Where the hell is Carnegie-Mellon? How can you even think about having a car race like this without inviting them?!?! Or maybe they didn't invite them because they wanted the other teams to actually have a chance? ;-)

More than you'd ever want to know about this - a seminar by Mark Kryder at CMU:
http://www.ece.cmu.edu/news/seminar/2007/fall/kryder_11_29_07.asx

"Anyone" huh? So what now I'm a nobody? There are plenty of people out there that go to great lengths to switch back to a black background. Take a look at the VIM colour schemes people create.

You missed my point. I was referring to people who must context switch constantly in a single work session between a paper medium and a white on black computer screen. These people would easily suffer from eye strain. The consistency of the same color scheme on both paper and the computer screen is appreciated in such scenarios and these scenarios are very common.

I'm not sure what you're looking for in substantiation.

Evidently not, because your reply had absolutely nothing to do with what I asked for. I stated that your original argument implies that if printing black paper with white text were equally as cost effective as printing white paper with black text, then the black paper with white text would be the overwhelming majority preference by most people. You must substantiate that implication.

Cite your own sources ... Why should I spend the time and effort digging up references for you?

Since you're the one asserting that the vast majority of all the content on the internet has picked the incorrect color scheme (a not generally accepted position), the burden of proof lies on you, the asserter.

However, I'll bite.
- Here is a survey indicating black on white as the clear preference: http://hubel.sfasu.edu/research/survreslts.html (it is interesting to note that white on black does well too because the higher the contrast, the better. The ZernBurn folks could learn a thing or two from this.)
- Here are two substantiations demonstrating a preference for black on white in order to match surrounding light level as I've previously argued: http://www.office-ergo.com/setting.htm and http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200608/light_text_on_dark_background_vs_readability/ (I'm citing the article, not the Digg discussion)

Oh gimme a break and stop being so dishonest. You can't get more personal that suggesting tht someone is happy with an inferior solution because they're a basement dweller with no social skills.

It's called a joke, as was spelled out in my original post. It's also a very common one on Slashdot. Since your account is older than mine and has many more posts than mine, I'd assumed you'd be familiar with it. I'd invoke the similar "you must be new here" joke at this time as well, but you might get irrationally offended by that too. ;)

That at least makes you a liar for suggesting I'm alone.

I never suggested you were alone. I suggested you are in the vast minority. Which you are.

I'll tell you what. Here's just one. Count the number of dark colour schemes.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~maverick/VimColorSchemeTest/index-pl.html

Which proves what exactly?

Fuck off ... Hypocrite ... It's on Digg so it should be right at your level ... If it gives you such pleasure being a childish troll, I pity you.

All those ad hominems and you're calling me a troll? Don't you find that the least bit ironic?

Anyone who has had to switch from reading printed text to a white on black screen over and over again would appreciate the consistency.

"Anyone" huh? So what now I'm a nobody? There are plenty of people out there that go to great lengths to switch back to a black background. Take a look at the VIM colour schemes people create.

This implies that if it costs were equal to print white on black, that would be the overwhelming majority preference. Substantiation?

Historically to print something white on black you'd need to use all your ink turning the rest of the paper black. Even if you could start with black paper so you didn't have to print the negative image, you'd still need to find a dye or ink that'd work well and be available in quantity. Neither black white ink nor black paper were easy to come by a hundred or so years ago, let alone when books were first written or when the printing press became common. I'm not sure what you're looking for in substantiation.

Don't be lazy. You can do better than that. Cite at least one valid advantage of white on black and substantiate it

Fuck off. Cite your own sources before accusing others of being lazy for not doing so. Hypocrite. This is slashdot, not a thesis defence.

Looking foolish is taking something personally that wasn't meant to be.

Oh gimme a break and stop being so dishonest. You can't get more personal that suggesting tht someone is happy with an inferior solution because they're a basement dweller with no social skills.

Your condescension would be far more effective if you actually substantiated any of these "facts" you cite, instead of acting as if they should be obvious to the entire universe.

Go ahead, prove me wrong. I'm waiting.

I'll start citing references to counter your trolling, when you find me references to substantiate what you're saying. Why should I spend the time and effort digging up references for you? Go Google it if you think it's worth your time

I'll tell you what. Here's just one. Count the number of dark colour schemes.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~maverick/VimColorSchemeTest/index-pl.html

Here's another discussion where others prefer light on dark colours. It's on Digg so it should be right at your level. That at least makes you a liar for suggesting I'm alone.
http://digg.com/design/Light_text_on_dark_background_vs_readability

If it gives you such pleasure being a childish troll, I pity you.

FYi the page may kill your browser or make your computer comatoze for a while if it is unworthy.

As the author also points out:

"Do your friends a favor. Link to the parent page instead. Thanks!"

Which is this - http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~maverick/VimColorSchemeTest/index.html

Here are a bunch of choices. (See links to Lisp, Java, Latex, and Perl samples here.)

The one I use is Jedit Gray, altered to use a slightly darker background. I bet you can achieve the same effect in Vim. (If not, neener neener neener!)

Personally, for me, ambient light is a much bigger deal than the colors on the screen. I get eyestrain when my screen is significantly brighter than the room around me. Even when I'm staring directly at the screen for hours, my eyes seem to adjust themselves to the brightness of my surroundings instead of to the brightness of the screen.

I first noticed this playing Doom fifteen years ago. When I got really tired near the end of a long session, I sometimes had to turn the lights on for bright maps.

Here are a bunch of choices. (See links to Lisp, Java, Latex, and Perl samples here.)

The one I use is Jedit Gray, altered to use a slightly darker background. I bet you can achieve the same effect in Vim. (If not, neener neener neener!)

Personally, for me, ambient light is a much bigger deal than the colors on the screen. I get eyestrain when my screen is significantly brighter than the room around me. Even when I'm staring directly at the screen for hours, my eyes seem to adjust themselves to the brightness of my surroundings instead of to the brightness of the screen.

I first noticed this playing Doom fifteen years ago. When I got really tired near the end of a long session, I sometimes had to turn the lights on for bright maps.

I used to be a dark background/light text sort, raised on zenburn, but I've started using more and more light backgrounds / darker text varieties. The screenshots for a light blue background usually dont look that good, but in practice its pretty calm.

Also, I've gained a great appreciation for the "sets" of themes. DimGreen DimBlue Dim&c&c&c are a great series for example. The advantage is that I can open eight windows and easily identify which window is which piece of code, simply by looking at the background color.

Congradulations on being the first post to address the topic.

The definitive vim color scheme resource:
* http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~maverick/VimColorSchemeTest/ online vim color scheme browser for a variety of langauges (handily divided light and dark)

Whoops, here is the right link http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~maverick/VimColorSchemeTest/darkerdesert.vim Sorry

I've looked into this topic a few times in the past...

Last time, I found a page that shows samples of hundreds of VIM color schemes:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~maverick/VimColorSchemeTest/index-pl.html

I don't use VIM (I use JOE), but the color schemes are easy to convert manually

Whats nice is that you can scan through a _lot_ of schemes very quickly, and easily pick out the ones that work very well.

Ebay already has the VERO program, which gives "verified rights owners" incredible privileges over Ebay auctions, permitting them to essentially end any auction for any reason. The discouraging thing about this court decision is that it gives Ebay an incentive to permit not less, but more abuse of this program.

the only thing that seems to get people keyed up is cell phone use. Can anyone explain to me why?

Higher cognitive load.

Carrying on a conversation is more mentally taxing than turning a radio dial, and isn't as interruptable, since you're only in control of half of it. See, for example, this research:

"the Carnegie Mellon study, for the first time, used brain imaging to document that listening alone reduces by 37 percent the amount of brain activity associated with driving. This can cause drivers to weave out of their lane, based on the performance of subjects using a driving simulator."

This is a total non-event. The company has merely announced they want to build these things, from the article itself: "The company hopes to have a working prototype ready for testing by the end of the year."

So not even a working prototype yet? Why is this front page news? Researchers and companies have been trying to build robotic snakes for years, with varying levels of success. One more company throws its hat in the ring and doesn't even offer anything novel or groundbreaking that would make their design superior.

If you want to see snake robots then take a look at Howie Choset's work at CMU (1) (2) (3). That guy has been working on this problem for a long time with some brilliant people and they've got some good designs. Not saying he's got the ultimate solution, but honestly he was testing some of these designs 8 years ago. At least he has something interesting to show other than this company's underweight press release.

In other news I'm building a fully self-aware AI. I might have a prototype to test at the end of the year, where's my front page link?

This is a total non-event. The company has merely announced they want to build these things, from the article itself: "The company hopes to have a working prototype ready for testing by the end of the year."

So not even a working prototype yet? Why is this front page news? Researchers and companies have been trying to build robotic snakes for years, with varying levels of success. One more company throws its hat in the ring and doesn't even offer anything novel or groundbreaking that would make their design superior.

If you want to see snake robots then take a look at Howie Choset's work at CMU (1) (2) (3). That guy has been working on this problem for a long time with some brilliant people and they've got some good designs. Not saying he's got the ultimate solution, but honestly he was testing some of these designs 8 years ago. At least he has something interesting to show other than this company's underweight press release.

In other news I'm building a fully self-aware AI. I might have a prototype to test at the end of the year, where's my front page link?

This is a total non-event. The company has merely announced they want to build these things, from the article itself: "The company hopes to have a working prototype ready for testing by the end of the year."

So not even a working prototype yet? Why is this front page news? Researchers and companies have been trying to build robotic snakes for years, with varying levels of success. One more company throws its hat in the ring and doesn't even offer anything novel or groundbreaking that would make their design superior.

If you want to see snake robots then take a look at Howie Choset's work at CMU (1) (2) (3). That guy has been working on this problem for a long time with some brilliant people and they've got some good designs. Not saying he's got the ultimate solution, but honestly he was testing some of these designs 8 years ago. At least he has something interesting to show other than this company's underweight press release.

In other news I'm building a fully self-aware AI. I might have a prototype to test at the end of the year, where's my front page link?

Here's an updated page from the NREC. It looks like this project has gone into production.

Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute built "robots based on snakes" quite a while back. In fact the project description page was last updated in November 2006. You can find more info about the project at, funnily enough, SnakeRobot.com with videos.

Who said that complex behaviour cannot be simplified to search, planning, and classification? Doesn't multi-agent interaction boil down to a search for actions that produce competitive/mutually-beneficial/self-serving reward (utility)?

Yes, some (small) parts of AI research have gone down the "just an algorithm" path in pursuit of a best solution for very specific problems, but you should not be so quick to write off even those advances which only seem to improve on relatively "simple" tasks. If you can represent a complex problem in a simple fashion, then even incremental improvements can produce large quality/efficiency improvements.

If you're looking for AI disciplines producing work with layman-notable results that are not as clearly search- or planning-based, natural language processing (NLP) and computer vision have both been quite hot over the past five years. Chris Bishop's latest book is a great read for a quick jump-in to the technical underpinnings of a number of the big-press projects today, and for "pretty picture" motivation you may want to look at something like this.

Nitpicks: it's k-means, and A* is a heuristic search algorithm. Yes, IAAAIR (I Am An AI Researcher).

The paper referenced in the article has an interesting density map of where their 20 million source photos were taken (ok, so they only ended up using 200 or so of these). It says it uses a logarithmic scale, and seems to imply that the vast majority of photos available to them on Flickr were taken in one of only a handful of locations:

• London
• Paris
• New York
• Washington
• Los Angeles
• Tokyo

Ok so there are a couple more than this, and my geography is appalling, but these seem to be the only areas that are are coloured red.

I got a page with SVN conflict markers.

http://optim.coral.cs.cmu.edu:8080/firefox3.png

The irony of it is that the FF3 homepage didn't render correctly in FF3 :)

Don't forget Lena surrounded by the rest of the November 1972 issue of Playboy (to provide historical context).

This should be combined with the head-tracking solution by Johnny Chung Lee (your head is the object which is recognized) - low cost 3D first person shooters!

You say you have no definition for consciousness, but think you know it when you see it, and you think you see it in your housepets. So, a dog looks into your eyes with its big brown ones, tilts its head, lifts an ear and whines softly, and you feel that there is someone there there. I suppose, from your published views, that those same actions from a future robot would meet with a less charitable interpretation. But suppose the robot also addresses you in a pained voice, saying "Please, Roger, it bothers me that you don't think of me as a real person. What can I do to convince you? I am aware of you, and I am aware of myself. And I tell you, your rejection is almost unbearable".

I don't know about you, but this looks like a spruced up version of Johnny Chung Lee's head tracking experiment with a guy pretending to motion-sync with the object moving on the screen. I don't think it can truly be validated without a lot of first-hand witnesses.