Slashdot Mirror

Intelligence agencies have been doing this sort of thing for decades, giving slightly different versions of a sensitive document to suspected spies or places where possible spies might have access to it, with some subtle changes in the words, seeing which one gets leaked or appears elsewhere. Tom Clancy coined the term Canary trap for the technique. Patriot Games was published in 1987, but its real-world use for exposing information leaks most likely predates the novel.

But the classic Canary Trap requires someone to modify the document manually, which is hard to do on a large scale. Here it is being done automatically by an algorithm.

However, I am aware of published methods for this problem dating back to 2001 by Mikhail Atallah at Purdue. In fact Atallah received a patent for followup work in 2007, a year after the Amazon patent was filed.

Here are a few hundred papers on the subject, via Google Scholar. Some adjust whitespace, some modify images of the text, and some attempt fairly sophisticated syntactic analysis and restructuring of selected sentences.

I apologize that I haven't read the Amazon patent, or read the prior literature carefully, or gone to law school, so I can't comment on whether the patent seems valid or not.

Scroll through towards the end of this video that went online today - http://snipurl.com/mgrt7

http://snipurl.com/jackass

Google got in on the action too.... here's the screen grab.

Google 1234567890

http://snipurl.com/978kj

There's a database of Rick Astley videos at http://snipurl.com/rickdb .

Jon Lajolie as Barrack Obama http://snipurl.com/4ul5w

From Orson Scott Card,

>>>>

An open letter to the local daily paper -- almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor -- which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house -- along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" ( http://snipurl.com/457townhall_com%5D ): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."

These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Franklin Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential can

Or we could just let the Mobile Telecoms companies roll out 3G LTE http://snipurl.com/3ohwz
(should be here about as quickly as laying fibre to everyone's house...)

With T-Mo and 3UK consolidating their 3G RANs coverage is going to be expanded substantially.

Let's face it: the 3G licence holders (3UK, T-Mo, Orange, Voda and 02) paid a hell of a lot more
in the spectrum auction to HM Govt. than this £28.8bn!

Disclaimer: I work for a Managed Service company directly working on the 3/T-Mo consolidation.

by Limoncelli, Hogan, and Chalup. http://snipurl.com/3m6u1 [www_amazon_com] It doesn't discuss OS specifics, but rather general skills on how to be a good admin, run a good helpdesk, etc. A very good book. I recommend it to any sysadmin.

The Men's Health magazine website has some really good workouts - with weights/equipment and without. They have workout directions you can print and videos you can download to your iPod. Men's Health Fitness

This is a MUST SEE TED issue -
Jeff Hawkins - Founder - Numenta

Jeff is the inventor of the Palm & Handspring. He has gone on to start up a phenomenal research company that has figured out how the brain learns, and has adapted it to solve the problem of artificial intelligence. He is close to solving the problem of having computers being able to actually SEE.

From showing a computer a line drawing of a sail boat, the computer can crawl Google images and pick out actual pictures (clip art) and photos of sailboats from any orientation, from the top, side, rear, bottom, just as a human could.

http://snipurl.com/rsa2008

http://snipurl.com/1wts4

MROIPP is what the governments of the world are working on...

don't under estimate the governments need to control everyone by taking away the analog signals.

The standards are open, not your personal records

There are ton of posts on the net about this.

I saw this article the other day, it provides relevant information.

I've got quite a nice little solution, you should check out my server. Full redundancy etc, check out my blog for more information.

See here for another such list

There's a whole ton of documentation on this.

I read that crackers have opened up the PS3, and have made them run custom software. It's just too bad DarkAlex of PSP fame has gone into hiding.

I think the original reference for the joke can be found at the Swedish Cultural Centre for Progression and Advancement. (SCCPA)

why would they repair the platforms when they are running out of oil?

bring it on but while you are looking please feel free to take a look at this

because everything is just one click away

not for the first time

Topless Wii....

http://snipurl.com/1v3lf

It's not safe for work, unless you work in a topless bar...

I couldn't agree more with the sentiment behind this. To be honest, I think it's just what we needed. Granted, the situation could have been better applied than it was but heck it's a start at least. We should just be thankful for the grace we have been given I suppose.

I couldn't agree more with the sentiment behind this. To be honest, I think it's just what we needed. Granted, the situation could have been better applied than it was but heck it's a start at least. We should just be thankful for the grace we have been given I suppose.

I couldn't agree more with the sentiment behind this. To be honest, I think it's just what we needed. Granted, the situation could have been better applied than it was but heck it's a start at least. We should just be thankful for the grace we have been given I suppose.

Google search results here

I couldn't agree more with the sentiment behind this. To be honest, I think it's just what we needed. Granted, the situation could have been better applied than it was but heck it's a start at least. We should just be thankful for the grace we have been given I suppose.

Google search results here

I couldn't agree more with the sentiment behind this. To be honest, I think it's just what we needed. Granted, the situation could have been better applied than it was but heck it's a start at least. We should just be thankful for the grace we have been given I suppose.

Google search results here

I couldn't agree more with the sentiment behind this. To be honest, I think it's just what we needed. Granted, the situation could have been better applied than it was but heck it's a start at least. We should just be thankful for the grace we have been given I suppose.

Google search results here

Here is the published patent application for this spam technology.

http://snipurl.com/1un6a

The strange part of the application is that it lists "Kirsch; Steven T" as the inventor but "Google" as handling all correspondence for the patent.

Using abbreviated URLs like SnipURL?

Is anybody else suprised by this? To be honest, I think it's just just a farce. Yeah, sure the situation could have been better implemented but at least we know we're safe!

Is anybody else suprised by this? To be honest, I think it's just just a farce. Yeah, sure the situation could have been better implemented but at least we know we're safe!

http://snipurl.com/resolveurl?id=1um1z
http://members.on.nimp.org/?u=timecop&p=abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

http://snipurl.com/resolveurl?id=1ul6t
http://members.on.nimp.org/?u=timecop&d=last%20measure

http://snipurl.com/resolveurl?id=1um1z
http://members.on.nimp.org/?u=timecop&p=abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

http://snipurl.com/resolveurl?id=1ul6t
http://members.on.nimp.org/?u=timecop&d=last%20measure

I couldn't agree more with the sentiment behind this. To be honest, I think it's just what we needed. Granted, the situation could have been better applied than it was but heck it's a start at least. We should just be thankful for the grace we have been given I suppose.

Googl e search results here

I couldn't agree more with the sentiment behind this. To be honest, I think it's just what we needed. Granted, the situation could have been better applied than it was but heck it's a start at least. We should just be thankful for the grace we have been given I suppose.

Googl e search results here

I've been on Wikipedia for a while, and noticed the admin only email functions. It does go against the grain of WP I feel. ~~~~

Most of the college kids I know couldn't even pass a simple test like this. Hooray for the future of tommorow!

Here is an aerial/satellite view from google maps (full link further below): http://snipurl.com/racetrackplaya The resolution is perhaps greater than one meter, based on the road to the west and the smallest objects (bushes?) visible nearby. The moving rocks in the photos seem to all be much smaller than this resolution, so they're not going to be visible on google maps, but you can look around the field to get an idea of the hydrologic forces in operation based on the very visible erosion patterns. Another thing, two of the rocks in the photos appear very angular -- presumably on the bottom as well. None of the "condensation-pressure-floating" ideas would seem to work on such heavy objects with such a small, irregular footprints. We need photos of the bottom of the rocks, and occasional photos from fixed positions to measure the movement of the rocks. Also notice that there are no wind/current ripples on the mud. This means the mud dried in the absence of strong winds! And water currents? This too would produce ripples, larger dunes... Greg Conquest http://snipurl.com/racetrackplaya is short for http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Racetrack+Playa&ll=36.697105,-117.557552&spn=0.006572,0.014377&t=h&z=16&om=1

Here is an aerial/satellite view from google maps (full link further below): http://snipurl.com/racetrackplaya The resolution is perhaps greater than one meter, based on the road to the west and the smallest objects (bushes?) visible nearby. The moving rocks in the photos seem to all be much smaller than this resolution, so they're not going to be visible on google maps, but you can look around the field to get an idea of the hydrologic forces in operation based on the very visible erosion patterns. Another thing, two of the rocks in the photos appear very angular -- presumably on the bottom as well. None of the "condensation-pressure-floating" ideas would seem to work on such heavy objects with such a small, irregular footprints. We need photos of the bottom of the rocks, and occasional photos from fixed positions to measure the movement of the rocks. Also notice that there are no wind/current ripples on the mud. This means the mud dried in the absence of strong winds! And water currents? This too would produce ripples, larger dunes... Greg Conquest http://snipurl.com/racetrackplaya is short for http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Racetrack+Playa&ll=36.697105,-117.557552&spn=0.006572,0.014377&t=h&z=16&om=1

Well, that sounds better than Windows Vista/CE/ME/NT/XP

The Advert here

yet another rehash of bought in 'product' in a bright new shiny package ..

Hi, Steve ..

Re:Still cheaper

Re: Plenty of spam seems to be coming from those IPs {Seems I was auto edited? (does not like the less than & greater than brackets)} Check these links, http://groups.google.com/groups?as_q=&as_epq=64.23 3.182.185&as_ugroup=news.admin.net-abuse.*&scoring =d http://tinyurl.com/yn2ghp http://snipurl.com/16uf2 http://moensted.dk/spam/?addr=64.233.182.185 http://groups.google.com/groups?as_q=&as_epq=193.2 52.22.249&as_ugroup=news.admin.net-abuse.*&scoring =d http://tinyurl.com/yfglt2 http://snipurl.com/16ufd http://moensted.dk/spam/?addr=193.252.22.249 Re: The big question will always be whether Google were informed that one of their servers were abused, or they were just blatantly added to SORBS blacklist. Likely both. I have been privy to some google / gmail mail server admin correspondence, they have been working on improving their outbound filtering (for the last 2 years?) and seem to have made a dent, but by no means have they stopped emitting spam. I suspect most DNSbls that use spam traps, don't bother telling the ISP about the abuse _before_ listing the IP, as by the time the ISP's abuse desk gets around to reading & acting on the e-mail, the spam run to thousands? millions? has already completed. (Most using DNSbls as part of their spam control, are hoping the DNSbl sees the spam before it gets to their server.)

Re: Plenty of spam seems to be coming from those IPs {Seems I was auto edited? (does not like the less than & greater than brackets)} Check these links, http://groups.google.com/groups?as_q=&as_epq=64.23 3.182.185&as_ugroup=news.admin.net-abuse.*&scoring =d http://tinyurl.com/yn2ghp http://snipurl.com/16uf2 http://moensted.dk/spam/?addr=64.233.182.185 http://groups.google.com/groups?as_q=&as_epq=193.2 52.22.249&as_ugroup=news.admin.net-abuse.*&scoring =d http://tinyurl.com/yfglt2 http://snipurl.com/16ufd http://moensted.dk/spam/?addr=193.252.22.249 Re: The big question will always be whether Google were informed that one of their servers were abused, or they were just blatantly added to SORBS blacklist. Likely both. I have been privy to some google / gmail mail server admin correspondence, they have been working on improving their outbound filtering (for the last 2 years?) and seem to have made a dent, but by no means have they stopped emitting spam. I suspect most DNSbls that use spam traps, don't bother telling the ISP about the abuse _before_ listing the IP, as by the time the ISP's abuse desk gets around to reading & acting on the e-mail, the spam run to thousands? millions? has already completed. (Most using DNSbls as part of their spam control, are hoping the DNSbl sees the spam before it gets to their server.)