They listed the Amiga 1000, which was the first generation of Amiga, and was truly a novel machine. Everything from the multitasking OS to the custom graphics chipsets was new.
The 500, while still a cool box, wasn't a great technological leap forward. It was merely a mass-marketing-wrapped version of the 1000. (And Commodore poorly mass-marketed it!) As the easter egg hidden inside one of the later versions of Workbench said: "We made Amiga, they [Commodore] f*cked it up".
If they wanted to glorify Commodore in this list, a better representation might have been the Pet. That was probably the pinnacle of Commodore's technological achievements.
IBM made one fatal mistake early on. They didn't keep the machine locked down. If they had held on to the machine architecture as proprietary, Compaq never would have been able to reverse engineer it and build a clone, they would have had to license it instead. And IBM would still be the dominant player in the industry.
This failure allowed the creation of the "clone" industry. Initially clones were seen as "not very compatible" with the real IBM PC (mostly because of FUD spread by IBM salesmen whose previous jobs were to spread FUD about mainframes.) That drove the price of the clones down, and the quality and compatibility up. As the clones became more affordable, people started buying them for home use. That increased adoption rates far beyond IBM's predictions.
IBM then found themselves locked into their own architecture. They were no longer free to innovate in the PC world because there was so much infrastructure already built around the PC and the ISA bus inside it. In the late 1980s IBM tried to regain control over the architecture with a new line of "high-end" equipment called the PS/2. This model didn't repeat the mistake of the PC. Among other performance changes such as using the new 80386 chip, it featured the proprietary "microchannel architecture" (MCA) which was going to force everyone to license their cards through IBM. Millions of PC owners failed to see this as an advantage, and the PS/2 was ignored by everyone but a few corporate IBM accounts. The trickle down to the home users never happened. Instead, the clone industry (which by now had taken over the name "PC" as a generic term) developed open additions to the existing ISA bus architecture to improve performance (such as the VL bus and the PCI bus.) Even back then, the attempt to bring in the MCA was seen by everyone in the industry as the last dying gasp of IBM to hold on to the PC.
Perhaps IBM's biggest failure was that their business model was designed to sell PCs to business users. They weren't interested in hobbyists, they were in it to utterly dominate the corporate world. They rightly figured every engineer and every accountant would need one of these. But they didn't forsee that the corporate use would fuel the adoption by the home users, and that they would in turn fuel the adoption by more and more white collar workers in other professions. And they didn't keep control, which benefitted everyone in the world -- except IBM.
My son is heading off to university in a month, and he just bought a Netgear NATing firewall to keep the personal equipment in his dorm room isolated from the rest of the worm-ridden idiots at the school. So that leads me to a question for you: How does your company's device handle non-Windows equipment hooking up to the network? Alternately, how could it verify the anti-virus software was present behind a hardware firewall? How does it deal with a Linux or Mac box hooking up? Or is the device made primarily for homogenous Windows-only workplaces, with hand-entered exceptions?
Looking back at the past, IBM was probably one of the most influential computer companies.
"Probably"?:-) When I was in college, Apples were 'it' for the in-school computers -- IBM hadn't developed the 'PC' yet. We still had terminals and modems for accessing the CDC mainframe, but the Apples were there, and they were all yours. No sharing, no operators, just pop in your disc and go. It was an amazing machine.
I wanted to get one for home, but my dad told me we weren't going to buy an Apple. He was waiting for the IBM home computer to come out. He said "IBM doesn't do anything half-assed. If there's a business need for it, IBM will come along and completely dominate the market. Apple will be pushed aside; they'll never make it as the mainstream computer for businesses."
I, of course, couldn't believe that for a second. Every school in the state had Apples, they were everywhere, and this IBM thing didn't even exist! How could he even think that a company with no experience in home computers would take over the market, especially since Apple was so well entrenched?
Y'know, I wish I'd listened to my dad more. He was a very, very wise man.
So how do we give CYC passion? Or at least a simulation of it?
You said adding a something like a "human concern value" could work here. That's going to be really complex to do. It's going to have to be a curve with time and relationship feedback components, and not just a simple integer.
For example, let's say I decide to buy my child a bike for Christmas. I might be terribly concerned about my child's ability to ride a bike, but once I have the present stashed in the garage, I forget about it. Then on Christmas morning when he unwraps it, my concern will go up again, and even more so as he wheels it out into the driveway. After I see that he's mastered it, my concern will drop to very low; and the next day at work it might be zero again. Later when he goes out for a ride, it will climb again as I worry about him riding in traffic, and it will drop back to zero once he gets home safely.
Also, I need to limit scope. I can't constantly balance worrying about my son riding a bike while I worry about my boss catching me typing on Slashdot, for example. And I'm not really worried now that he's 18.
Finally, if you don't balance the context perfectly in your evaluation, you'll end up in a feedback loop. Instead of passion you'll get obsession.
Frankly, I don't know how humans figured all this stuff out. There's way too much to worry about it all.
Well, I just chatted with a friend who used to work at Reuters. This photographer had access to upload photos directly into the photo file. Most photos have to cross an editor's desk first.
He may have had this "quick access" because he's been primarily a sports photographer.
Anyway, Reuters terminated him, pulled ALL his photos from their database, and now any photos related to the Mideast conflict MUST cross the senior editor's desk before entering the database.
It sounds like an appropriate response to the problem.
I have to admit that at first glance I suppose one could assume those blobs of smoke were JPEG artifacts from a horrible choice of compression. But that didn't even last long enough for me to understand the picture -- the regular patterns were too regular.
I can tolerate most of the artifacts in DVDs, but only because there's usually motion involved when it gets bad. What I can't bear are the "digital cable" channels, and I really don't understand why so many people want DirectTV or Dish Network (unless they live in the sticks.) The blocky, haloed images are like watching Legovision. At least "analog" cable signals were not nearly as compressed before they went up to the distribution satellite. Anyway, with well-produced DVDs the compression is not nearly so heinous. At least to me.
If you're talking about a digital "signature" that makes any change to an image impossible, then a) you are fundamentally misunderstanding the purpose and capabilities of photography in general, and b) you are disallowing benign and even beneficial "manipulations" like resizing and cropping.
You've "photoshopped" my words here. I never said editing was impossible*, just that it was impossible* to edit it undetectably.
A digital signature is only a mathematical assurance that a given set of bytes is unchanged. That's it. The purpose of the signature in a forensic camera is to provide evidence that the raw data as exposed to the sensors is unchanged. In the case of a forensic camera sold for law enforcement purposes, that comes with the guarantee of the manufacturer to provide expert witnesses at trials involving photographs signed by their camera to state that "this image is the same image that the sensors recorded, the cops didn't go in and add the bruises to the victim's face." I've seen them used in shoplifting cases in retail stores to provide courtroom evidence that a suspect had a TV in their hands when the scanner read: "CANDY BAR $0.69".
It doesn't say that the camera was pointed at the right evidence, it doesn't say that it wasn't zoomed in to just the body and not the rescuers, it doesn't say that the camera was in focus, it doesn't say that the lens wasn't pointed at a printed copy of a digitally altered photo. It just says that the data in your computer was unchanged since it was produced by the sensor in the camera.
In the case of a news photographer, having the signature travel with the raw (or jpeg) data would allow the editor the ability to detect manipulation, and would give him the chance to evaluate the degree of change. Sure, you could still crop it and retouch it and colorize it or whatever. But the editor would always have the ability to go to the source of the photo and say, "Hey, you added two missiles and three bombs to this image of a jet fighter," or "you added tears to this woman's face." No matter what, you couldn't take a picture of a horse and pass it off as a bird.
John
* and by "impossible" I mean to a statistically insignificant chance of being possible, for all you crypto-purists out there.
There has been a lot of research on the subject. Google has some interesting links to different research topics.
The problem with an automated tool is that the tool becomes a litmus test for a forger.
All the bad guy has to do is download, steal or buy the tool, then run his pictures through it. Once the tool says "this is 99% likely to be an original picture" then the bad guy knows he won't get caught.
For that reason, there are "forensic cameras" available that have a digital signature algorithm built in that sign the images. Any tampering results in an invalid signature. Perhaps news photographers are going to have to go that route next?
The photo was so obviously manipulated as to be laughable. ANYONE who's ever used the Clone Brush tool would immediately recognize it as having been manipulated, and anyone who's completely unfamiliar with digital photography would still question the regularity of the blobs of smoke.
Sure, this photographer is at fault, and you can make assumptions about his political motives for photoshopping this image. But what's worse is how did Reuters let such a piece of crap into the system? The guys on SomethingAwful or Worth 1000 all do a much better job, and that's just for the glory of the contest. They're not trying to pass their stuff off as "news." Even the guys at Fark aren't this bad (not even Heamer:-) No, this photoshop was of "The Daily Show" quality -- comically bad.
The only conclusion I can come up with is that Reuters isn't actually looking at the images that come in the door. Even if someone at Reuters had the same political agenda as the photographer, he should have had the good sense to deny that picture because the photoshopping was so obvious. Actually, neither conclusion is good news for Reuters at all.
I think a big part of the problem lies in the precise definition of malware. What attributes, exactly, define malware? Some people suggest that malware is anything and everything that can't be 100% uninstalled. But many of Microsoft's OS packages fit that description (as does the "Windows Genuine Advantage" program.)
Is it software that reports individually identifiable tracking information? Any web page using Google Analytics, IMR Worldwide, Tacoda, or Overture is already doing that (as is the "Windows Genuine Advantage" program.)
Is it software that connects to a previously unrevealed external server? The "Help" button in many programs is nothing more than a link to a helpful web site, and sometimes that site isn't run by the company that wrote the original software. (So does the "Windows Genuine Advantage" program.)
I'm being somewhat facetious here, but there seems to be a lot more "I know it when I see it" attitude towards malware than there are actual definitions. Sure, there's a lot of crap I've scraped out of other peoples' computers that I'd call "malware", but I'd be hard-pressed to come up with a good definition that would withstand these sleazeballs' attempts to sue Google.
how much of the industry is geared to skimming the bucks
That's the one thing that bothers me most about the whole music downloading scene. People have the notion that music is overpriced because a rich record company is getting richer, that somehow they don't "deserve" to charge so much for their music, that it's OK to copy it because the record company makes too much.
We seem to forget that an artist is free to sign whatever kind of deal he or she wants, with whichever label wants to sign him or her. They can sell their rights for a dollar and a beer, or they can take that $250,000 check, or they can hold out for millions. And that record company is also free to sell their discs for as much as they want: one, ten, twenty, or even a hundred dollars.
If you don't like the price, don't buy it -- you don't have to. If you think the labels are not supporting the artists well enough, mail your favorite artist a donation. Maybe he'll comp you disc in return, but probably not.
It's all based on a system called capitalism. They get to charge whatever they want, and you get to choose whether to buy it at that price or go without.
The "RIAA-members-aren't-quite-making-trailer trucks-full-of-money-anymore" niche, of course.
We should actually see this with a positive spin. We've been shouting for years that they've been doing all the wrong things to try to make money off of us. So now they're trying different things.
That means they've been listening to us! Sure, they don't quite get the whole "DRM is a losing battle" thing. That may eventually pass, just like it did for games on copy-protected 5-1/4" floppies. Or it may end up winning via Treacherous Computing. That's for the future to decide.
Anyway, the best way to fight this latest CRAP is the same as it's been all along: buy unDRM'd CDs; and if you accidentally end up with a DRM disc, return it to the place of purchase as defective. Support the artists you like in the format you like.
Also paradoxical is the phenomenon of advertising. It has absolutely no value whatsoever and is a complete waste of human intellect yet it has become much more than just tolerated. It has evolved into a integral part of modern civilisation (at least in as much as economies are concerned).
Umm, the paradox here is that you contradicted yourself in a single paragraph.
To say that advertising has no value is incorrect. It certainly has value to the people paying for the advertisements, otherwise they wouldn't spend the money on them. Spending money on advertising has a well established effect of causing sales to rise.
For example, I'm sure I have at least 8 pairs of footwear at home -- I don't "need" another. But my sneakers have paint spattered on them and the insoles are coming out, so maybe I should buy another pair that aren't so crappy. So it's off to the shoe store. But which one? How would I even know about "Joe's Shoes" vs the heavily advertised "Famous Footwear?" In the store, is the Nike swoosh going to influence me? Tiger Woods? The vague memory of a TV commercial featuring a Jamaican track star? Advertising got me to the store, and influences my purchase another way -- advertising keeps "fashion" in front of people's eyes. I wouldn't buy a pair of sneakers today that look like they're from the 1950's, unless the 1950's retro look is "in" -- and "in" is driven by advertising.
Advertising exists because it works. So it does has value; mostly to the manufacturers and merchants, but even I benefit from it to a lesser degree.
But that's a completely different issue of whether or not I *want* to be bombarded by ads every time I glance at my screen. I run an extremely aggressive set of adblock filters, and frankly am annoyed when something gets past them enough to trigger the popup blocker. I filter spam, I mute my TV during commercials, and I use a DVR to skip them whenever possible. I go far out of my way to avoid the marketing that I can. But I do make use of it, either consciously or subconsciously. Advertising has value.
Sure, they can mitigate the risks. But why deploy a crap system in the first place, when they were only a few steps from getting it right?
Sorry, but I have to deal with this kind of stupidity in my day job. Apparently, some people are under the impression that if a Business Analyst has signed off on a cryptographically insecure system that the system should still be a "go". Our business analysts are not cryptographers. Our developers are not cryptographers. And our managers are not cryptographers. But these are the people who are trying to put together a "secure" system. And these are the same people who typically are permitted to sign off on other projects. Try telling them that "your design is insecure because you have this communication here" or "I can steal your data by compromising the service technician." They don't care -- they "know" how to analyze projects, and it's already been signed off, so deal with it.
I'm not a professional cryptographer, but I'm a fairly well-read amateur. I keep telling them that they need to hire a pro, but that just falls on deaf ears. The best thing I did so far was to write an attack program showing them the flaw in their design that allowed me to recover their cleartext data in under 40 minutes on my computer. And then pointing out that with their new data requirements that I could recover it in under 24 seconds. Nothing like a live demo to convince the complacent.
Why is everyone against RFID? Do you think it violates your privacy or is it a fear of technology being put to use?
Because, unlike barcodes or contact-based smart chips, RFID allows for an invisible distant reader.
Customs is a perfect example of a place that does NOT benefit from RFID. A traditional smart card (with electrical contacts) would suffice. The electrical contacts ensure that only the customs agent I'm standing in front of will have access to the data. Connecting the passport's chip to the reader is almost as simple as presenting it to the RF reader.
The sole benefit to RFID is theoretically "less" maintenance on the readers -- RFID doesn't get dirty in the same way as electrical contacts. But the individual passport antennas are more fragile than a smart card, so they've shifted the maintenance burden to the traveller (at his inconvenience and cost.)
But the big negative to all RFID implementations is that an invisible reader can pick up a tag from a distance. The garbage-can video people claimed six inches for their cracked-open passport. Typical retail-store RFID tags are advertised with a range of about two meters (for use with shoplifter detection systems.) Experiments with high powered transmitters and large antennas have shown these tags to be readable at a distance of 69 feet -- these could easily be set up in a van parked across the typical street.
RFID tags are also designed to be embedded in the actual merchandise itself, meaning they are not removed at the point of sale like barcodes. Unless the tag is killed, the purchaser has now become a set of walking RFID tags.
And retailers don't want to kill the tags. Merchants are already salivating at the prospect of identifying return customers by RFID, and at the options that will open up to them. Processing returns automatically is the first goal. "You can't return those shoes here, you bought them at WalMart." Targeting their marketing materials to your specific tastes is another. You bought electronics last time you were in? The signs will advertise the sale on big-screen TVs. They can also see how long you like to spend browsing books, or watching TVs, or checking out the cameras. They can even tell if you're wearing Gucci underwear, Prada handbags or Wal*mart tennis shoes.
Merchants will also be able to use this in another way. If they read the RF tags of every person who walks in, and you're a shoplifter who happens to have a subway pass in your pocket, they'll just call the transit police who can pick you up as you board the train home. Is that bad? Not to me, I don't like shoplifters; but I still consider it a pretty chilling side effect.
And that's not all. RFID will have its illegitimate users, too. Someday you'll walk into the Bada-Bing wearing just a t-shirt and jeans, but the RF reader behind the counter will let Tony Soprano know that you've a Dolce & Gabbana wallet with an RF-enabled Visa Platinum card, two gold American Express cards, a money clip from Tiffany's, and keys to two Lexuses. Guess who never makes it back to his Lexus?
There's a lot not to like about RFID. The problems are technical, current implementations violate long-standing well-understood principles of cryptography, and these just grow worse with the spread of the infrastructure. Perhaps if privacy laws were stronger; but even then the Department of Homeland Security trumps all privacy laws these days. After all, shoplifters are just "retail terrorists".
The weakness happens if the inspector examines only the paper copy and relies on the electronic copy to perform the security checks in the background. That's likely to become a common occurance -- look at the passport, scan the passport, chat with the guy asking if he's here on business or holiday, wait for a green "OK" screen in the corner of your eye, and wave him through. It'll happen a hundred times a day, and the inspectors will make mistakes.
Probably the better question is "will the bad guys be willing to risk trying this?" No doubt there'll be an endless stream of stolen passport data available on line from crooked hotel clerks -- skimmed e-passport RFID data will be the next hot hacker item for sale.
Roll your own! The duct-tape wallet made out of foil duct tape, with an extra flap to cover any RFID cards.
It's actually better designed than the passport itself!
At least it won't work for a drive-by cloning
on
Hackers Clone E-Passport
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· Score: 4, Interesting
According to TFA, in order to read the data from the passport you have to enter a key printed in the passport itself. This will at least prevent a surrepetitious cloning while sitting in an airport chair (like the guys who cloned the Mobil SpeedPass keytags.)
Of course, that won't stop the mad bombers with their IEDs from detonating their bombs in the presense of an ePassport. The video from TFA shows yet another weakness in this crappily designed (i.e. vendor driven) system.
My favorite use for this would be to conduct instant price comparisons.
Be prepared to be ushered out of the store. Chain stores frequently use "secret shoppers" for price comparisons in their areas, and they used to use small handheld scanners for data entry. I bet cell phones are high on the list of inconspicuous tools now, though. Either way, if they're spotted they're shown the door.
Home Depot (and others) also have "No Cameras or Recording Devices" signs posted, so I'm sure they think they reserve the right to toss you out. That doesn't stop them from prominently featuring a shopper with a camera phone showing a ceiling fan to the waiting spouse at home on their TV commercials, though. I know I'd be calling a lawyer if they said "boo" to me about it.
You didn't say whether or not your new teacher was able to take the AP training course. I guess it doesn't matter, every teacher (and student) is different.
And regarding your lab of Macs, I know most school districts have really poor IT departments -- either poor when it comes to staff quality, or poor with respect to their budget (and frequently both.) I'm just saying it may not have been your teacher's direct fault that the computers in her lab sucked.
Hey, you and your buddy sound like smart guys, why didn't you offer to help clean them up? At least you'd have gotten something useful from her class!
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe the phrase in general saves this sentence, but you seem to be forgetting the single most spectacular failure in the history of software development belonged to IBM.
Well, I considered it spectacular, anyway. At least when I've failed to deliver a project on time I wasn't dragged before a House subcommittee!
The 500, while still a cool box, wasn't a great technological leap forward. It was merely a mass-marketing-wrapped version of the 1000. (And Commodore poorly mass-marketed it!) As the easter egg hidden inside one of the later versions of Workbench said: "We made Amiga, they [Commodore] f*cked it up".
If they wanted to glorify Commodore in this list, a better representation might have been the Pet. That was probably the pinnacle of Commodore's technological achievements.
This failure allowed the creation of the "clone" industry. Initially clones were seen as "not very compatible" with the real IBM PC (mostly because of FUD spread by IBM salesmen whose previous jobs were to spread FUD about mainframes.) That drove the price of the clones down, and the quality and compatibility up. As the clones became more affordable, people started buying them for home use. That increased adoption rates far beyond IBM's predictions.
IBM then found themselves locked into their own architecture. They were no longer free to innovate in the PC world because there was so much infrastructure already built around the PC and the ISA bus inside it. In the late 1980s IBM tried to regain control over the architecture with a new line of "high-end" equipment called the PS/2. This model didn't repeat the mistake of the PC. Among other performance changes such as using the new 80386 chip, it featured the proprietary "microchannel architecture" (MCA) which was going to force everyone to license their cards through IBM. Millions of PC owners failed to see this as an advantage, and the PS/2 was ignored by everyone but a few corporate IBM accounts. The trickle down to the home users never happened. Instead, the clone industry (which by now had taken over the name "PC" as a generic term) developed open additions to the existing ISA bus architecture to improve performance (such as the VL bus and the PCI bus.) Even back then, the attempt to bring in the MCA was seen by everyone in the industry as the last dying gasp of IBM to hold on to the PC.
Perhaps IBM's biggest failure was that their business model was designed to sell PCs to business users. They weren't interested in hobbyists, they were in it to utterly dominate the corporate world. They rightly figured every engineer and every accountant would need one of these. But they didn't forsee that the corporate use would fuel the adoption by the home users, and that they would in turn fuel the adoption by more and more white collar workers in other professions. And they didn't keep control, which benefitted everyone in the world -- except IBM.
My son is heading off to university in a month, and he just bought a Netgear NATing firewall to keep the personal equipment in his dorm room isolated from the rest of the worm-ridden idiots at the school. So that leads me to a question for you: How does your company's device handle non-Windows equipment hooking up to the network? Alternately, how could it verify the anti-virus software was present behind a hardware firewall? How does it deal with a Linux or Mac box hooking up? Or is the device made primarily for homogenous Windows-only workplaces, with hand-entered exceptions?
"Probably"? :-) When I was in college, Apples were 'it' for the in-school computers -- IBM hadn't developed the 'PC' yet. We still had terminals and modems for accessing the CDC mainframe, but the Apples were there, and they were all yours. No sharing, no operators, just pop in your disc and go. It was an amazing machine.
I wanted to get one for home, but my dad told me we weren't going to buy an Apple. He was waiting for the IBM home computer to come out. He said "IBM doesn't do anything half-assed. If there's a business need for it, IBM will come along and completely dominate the market. Apple will be pushed aside; they'll never make it as the mainstream computer for businesses."
I, of course, couldn't believe that for a second. Every school in the state had Apples, they were everywhere, and this IBM thing didn't even exist! How could he even think that a company with no experience in home computers would take over the market, especially since Apple was so well entrenched?
Y'know, I wish I'd listened to my dad more. He was a very, very wise man.
I almost forgot the best feature: you can also play as the bad guys!
Rockstar North proudly presents: "Holy Man - Old Testament Style!"
"E" -- Content rated by ESRB -- Everyone
For example, let's say I decide to buy my child a bike for Christmas. I might be terribly concerned about my child's ability to ride a bike, but once I have the present stashed in the garage, I forget about it. Then on Christmas morning when he unwraps it, my concern will go up again, and even more so as he wheels it out into the driveway. After I see that he's mastered it, my concern will drop to very low; and the next day at work it might be zero again. Later when he goes out for a ride, it will climb again as I worry about him riding in traffic, and it will drop back to zero once he gets home safely.
Also, I need to limit scope. I can't constantly balance worrying about my son riding a bike while I worry about my boss catching me typing on Slashdot, for example. And I'm not really worried now that he's 18.
Finally, if you don't balance the context perfectly in your evaluation, you'll end up in a feedback loop. Instead of passion you'll get obsession.
Frankly, I don't know how humans figured all this stuff out. There's way too much to worry about it all.
He may have had this "quick access" because he's been primarily a sports photographer.
Anyway, Reuters terminated him, pulled ALL his photos from their database, and now any photos related to the Mideast conflict MUST cross the senior editor's desk before entering the database.
It sounds like an appropriate response to the problem.
I can tolerate most of the artifacts in DVDs, but only because there's usually motion involved when it gets bad. What I can't bear are the "digital cable" channels, and I really don't understand why so many people want DirectTV or Dish Network (unless they live in the sticks.) The blocky, haloed images are like watching Legovision. At least "analog" cable signals were not nearly as compressed before they went up to the distribution satellite. Anyway, with well-produced DVDs the compression is not nearly so heinous. At least to me.
You've "photoshopped" my words here. I never said editing was impossible*, just that it was impossible* to edit it undetectably.
A digital signature is only a mathematical assurance that a given set of bytes is unchanged. That's it. The purpose of the signature in a forensic camera is to provide evidence that the raw data as exposed to the sensors is unchanged. In the case of a forensic camera sold for law enforcement purposes, that comes with the guarantee of the manufacturer to provide expert witnesses at trials involving photographs signed by their camera to state that "this image is the same image that the sensors recorded, the cops didn't go in and add the bruises to the victim's face." I've seen them used in shoplifting cases in retail stores to provide courtroom evidence that a suspect had a TV in their hands when the scanner read: "CANDY BAR $0.69".
It doesn't say that the camera was pointed at the right evidence, it doesn't say that it wasn't zoomed in to just the body and not the rescuers, it doesn't say that the camera was in focus, it doesn't say that the lens wasn't pointed at a printed copy of a digitally altered photo. It just says that the data in your computer was unchanged since it was produced by the sensor in the camera.
In the case of a news photographer, having the signature travel with the raw (or jpeg) data would allow the editor the ability to detect manipulation, and would give him the chance to evaluate the degree of change. Sure, you could still crop it and retouch it and colorize it or whatever. But the editor would always have the ability to go to the source of the photo and say, "Hey, you added two missiles and three bombs to this image of a jet fighter," or "you added tears to this woman's face." No matter what, you couldn't take a picture of a horse and pass it off as a bird.
John
* and by "impossible" I mean to a statistically insignificant chance of being possible, for all you crypto-purists out there.
The problem with an automated tool is that the tool becomes a litmus test for a forger.
All the bad guy has to do is download, steal or buy the tool, then run his pictures through it. Once the tool says "this is 99% likely to be an original picture" then the bad guy knows he won't get caught.
For that reason, there are "forensic cameras" available that have a digital signature algorithm built in that sign the images. Any tampering results in an invalid signature. Perhaps news photographers are going to have to go that route next?
Sure, this photographer is at fault, and you can make assumptions about his political motives for photoshopping this image. But what's worse is how did Reuters let such a piece of crap into the system? The guys on SomethingAwful or Worth 1000 all do a much better job, and that's just for the glory of the contest. They're not trying to pass their stuff off as "news." Even the guys at Fark aren't this bad (not even Heamer :-) No, this photoshop was of "The Daily Show" quality -- comically bad.
The only conclusion I can come up with is that Reuters isn't actually looking at the images that come in the door. Even if someone at Reuters had the same political agenda as the photographer, he should have had the good sense to deny that picture because the photoshopping was so obvious. Actually, neither conclusion is good news for Reuters at all.
Is it software that reports individually identifiable tracking information? Any web page using Google Analytics, IMR Worldwide, Tacoda, or Overture is already doing that (as is the "Windows Genuine Advantage" program.)
Is it software that connects to a previously unrevealed external server? The "Help" button in many programs is nothing more than a link to a helpful web site, and sometimes that site isn't run by the company that wrote the original software. (So does the "Windows Genuine Advantage" program.)
I'm being somewhat facetious here, but there seems to be a lot more "I know it when I see it" attitude towards malware than there are actual definitions. Sure, there's a lot of crap I've scraped out of other peoples' computers that I'd call "malware", but I'd be hard-pressed to come up with a good definition that would withstand these sleazeballs' attempts to sue Google.
Yeah, this story made me wonder if anyone from the future would ever care about our "Domesday Wiki."
That's the one thing that bothers me most about the whole music downloading scene. People have the notion that music is overpriced because a rich record company is getting richer, that somehow they don't "deserve" to charge so much for their music, that it's OK to copy it because the record company makes too much.
We seem to forget that an artist is free to sign whatever kind of deal he or she wants, with whichever label wants to sign him or her. They can sell their rights for a dollar and a beer, or they can take that $250,000 check, or they can hold out for millions. And that record company is also free to sell their discs for as much as they want: one, ten, twenty, or even a hundred dollars.
If you don't like the price, don't buy it -- you don't have to. If you think the labels are not supporting the artists well enough, mail your favorite artist a donation. Maybe he'll comp you disc in return, but probably not.
It's all based on a system called capitalism. They get to charge whatever they want, and you get to choose whether to buy it at that price or go without.
We should actually see this with a positive spin. We've been shouting for years that they've been doing all the wrong things to try to make money off of us. So now they're trying different things.
That means they've been listening to us! Sure, they don't quite get the whole "DRM is a losing battle" thing. That may eventually pass, just like it did for games on copy-protected 5-1/4" floppies. Or it may end up winning via Treacherous Computing. That's for the future to decide.
Anyway, the best way to fight this latest CRAP is the same as it's been all along: buy unDRM'd CDs; and if you accidentally end up with a DRM disc, return it to the place of purchase as defective. Support the artists you like in the format you like.
To say that advertising has no value is incorrect. It certainly has value to the people paying for the advertisements, otherwise they wouldn't spend the money on them. Spending money on advertising has a well established effect of causing sales to rise.
For example, I'm sure I have at least 8 pairs of footwear at home -- I don't "need" another. But my sneakers have paint spattered on them and the insoles are coming out, so maybe I should buy another pair that aren't so crappy. So it's off to the shoe store. But which one? How would I even know about "Joe's Shoes" vs the heavily advertised "Famous Footwear?" In the store, is the Nike swoosh going to influence me? Tiger Woods? The vague memory of a TV commercial featuring a Jamaican track star? Advertising got me to the store, and influences my purchase another way -- advertising keeps "fashion" in front of people's eyes. I wouldn't buy a pair of sneakers today that look like they're from the 1950's, unless the 1950's retro look is "in" -- and "in" is driven by advertising.
Advertising exists because it works. So it does has value; mostly to the manufacturers and merchants, but even I benefit from it to a lesser degree.
But that's a completely different issue of whether or not I *want* to be bombarded by ads every time I glance at my screen. I run an extremely aggressive set of adblock filters, and frankly am annoyed when something gets past them enough to trigger the popup blocker. I filter spam, I mute my TV during commercials, and I use a DVR to skip them whenever possible. I go far out of my way to avoid the marketing that I can. But I do make use of it, either consciously or subconsciously. Advertising has value.
Sorry, but I have to deal with this kind of stupidity in my day job. Apparently, some people are under the impression that if a Business Analyst has signed off on a cryptographically insecure system that the system should still be a "go". Our business analysts are not cryptographers. Our developers are not cryptographers. And our managers are not cryptographers. But these are the people who are trying to put together a "secure" system. And these are the same people who typically are permitted to sign off on other projects. Try telling them that "your design is insecure because you have this communication here" or "I can steal your data by compromising the service technician." They don't care -- they "know" how to analyze projects, and it's already been signed off, so deal with it.
I'm not a professional cryptographer, but I'm a fairly well-read amateur. I keep telling them that they need to hire a pro, but that just falls on deaf ears. The best thing I did so far was to write an attack program showing them the flaw in their design that allowed me to recover their cleartext data in under 40 minutes on my computer. And then pointing out that with their new data requirements that I could recover it in under 24 seconds. Nothing like a live demo to convince the complacent.
Customs is a perfect example of a place that does NOT benefit from RFID. A traditional smart card (with electrical contacts) would suffice. The electrical contacts ensure that only the customs agent I'm standing in front of will have access to the data. Connecting the passport's chip to the reader is almost as simple as presenting it to the RF reader.
The sole benefit to RFID is theoretically "less" maintenance on the readers -- RFID doesn't get dirty in the same way as electrical contacts. But the individual passport antennas are more fragile than a smart card, so they've shifted the maintenance burden to the traveller (at his inconvenience and cost.)
But the big negative to all RFID implementations is that an invisible reader can pick up a tag from a distance. The garbage-can video people claimed six inches for their cracked-open passport. Typical retail-store RFID tags are advertised with a range of about two meters (for use with shoplifter detection systems.) Experiments with high powered transmitters and large antennas have shown these tags to be readable at a distance of 69 feet -- these could easily be set up in a van parked across the typical street.
RFID tags are also designed to be embedded in the actual merchandise itself, meaning they are not removed at the point of sale like barcodes. Unless the tag is killed, the purchaser has now become a set of walking RFID tags.
And retailers don't want to kill the tags. Merchants are already salivating at the prospect of identifying return customers by RFID, and at the options that will open up to them. Processing returns automatically is the first goal. "You can't return those shoes here, you bought them at WalMart." Targeting their marketing materials to your specific tastes is another. You bought electronics last time you were in? The signs will advertise the sale on big-screen TVs. They can also see how long you like to spend browsing books, or watching TVs, or checking out the cameras. They can even tell if you're wearing Gucci underwear, Prada handbags or Wal*mart tennis shoes.
Merchants will also be able to use this in another way. If they read the RF tags of every person who walks in, and you're a shoplifter who happens to have a subway pass in your pocket, they'll just call the transit police who can pick you up as you board the train home. Is that bad? Not to me, I don't like shoplifters; but I still consider it a pretty chilling side effect.
And that's not all. RFID will have its illegitimate users, too. Someday you'll walk into the Bada-Bing wearing just a t-shirt and jeans, but the RF reader behind the counter will let Tony Soprano know that you've a Dolce & Gabbana wallet with an RF-enabled Visa Platinum card, two gold American Express cards, a money clip from Tiffany's, and keys to two Lexuses. Guess who never makes it back to his Lexus?
There's a lot not to like about RFID. The problems are technical, current implementations violate long-standing well-understood principles of cryptography, and these just grow worse with the spread of the infrastructure. Perhaps if privacy laws were stronger; but even then the Department of Homeland Security trumps all privacy laws these days. After all, shoplifters are just "retail terrorists".
Probably the better question is "will the bad guys be willing to risk trying this?" No doubt there'll be an endless stream of stolen passport data available on line from crooked hotel clerks -- skimmed e-passport RFID data will be the next hot hacker item for sale.
It's actually better designed than the passport itself!
Of course, that won't stop the mad bombers with their IEDs from detonating their bombs in the presense of an ePassport. The video from TFA shows yet another weakness in this crappily designed (i.e. vendor driven) system.
Home Depot (and others) also have "No Cameras or Recording Devices" signs posted, so I'm sure they think they reserve the right to toss you out. That doesn't stop them from prominently featuring a shopper with a camera phone showing a ceiling fan to the waiting spouse at home on their TV commercials, though. I know I'd be calling a lawyer if they said "boo" to me about it.
And regarding your lab of Macs, I know most school districts have really poor IT departments -- either poor when it comes to staff quality, or poor with respect to their budget (and frequently both.) I'm just saying it may not have been your teacher's direct fault that the computers in her lab sucked.
Hey, you and your buddy sound like smart guys, why didn't you offer to help clean them up? At least you'd have gotten something useful from her class!