How will they prevent someone from guessing easy passwords when the random blobs happen to be something that everyone thinks is the same thing? For example, if a blob looks just like a butterfly, everyone will enter "by" as the first two letters in the password, and if successive blobs share the same property it may be cumbersome, but not too difficult, to guess their password.
Also, most people's passwords are a string that they easily remember + some numbers. It's much easier to remember blahblah123 than to look at the blobs every time you want to login and reconstruct "frherotspsmt..." from the images.
Perhaps this system could be used to help people remember forgotten passwords, like being able to select 5 of out 10 images in the correct order.
Since the comments on this story have been limited so far to the usual it's-against-my-religion-to-read-the-articles-but- I-think-I'll-post-a-+1-funny types, here some information on the unit from the Japanese product page at Sony:
Specs:
Sony Clie PEG-UX50
802.11b
Bluetooth
Sony-developed Handheld Engine CPU (8 - 125MHz on demand)
3.2", 16-bit, 480x320 resolution (locked to landscape mode?)
4.1 x 3.4 x.7" (103 x 86.5 x 17.9mm) and 6.2oz (175g)
Wireless connectivity: Comfortable wireless LAN network connection, or Bluetooth with automatic switching (corresponding equipment required)
Battery life: 14 days of "normal use" (apparently 30min/day, backlight off) with a LiIon polymer battery. An extended battery is available for 35 hours of continuous use
Built-in camera: The camera can rotate 300 degrees and take low-resolution stills (.3 Mpixel) or video (160x112) (w/ audio). It has a digital 3X zoom, white balance, "effects function" (It can possibly be used as a remote webcam via Bluetooth?)
Web browser: Can be set to a one-button push (woo! note to Sony: check if Amazon already has the patent)
Video: Can display video up to 30fps, converting AVIs on your computer to MPEG1 or QuickTime. (Can store 130 min of video on a 128MB memory stick, or 460min--wow, nearly 8 hours!--on a 1GB memory stick)
Audio: Support audio playback for MP3 or ATRAC3 formats for appx. 16 hours (?) with the standard battery
Software: I won't get into the software because unless you get yours now from Dynamism it's almost certain to change in the US version.
I'm not sure if Michael did that on purpose to make it look like l33t h4X0r speak but it's not C+ +0x. If he had bothered to read the.pdf he would've seen that's it's "C++0x": it's on the front page.
As others have pointed out, a la previous languages like FORTRAN, Algol and LISP, it refers to C++ and the year the spec is expected to be completed--in this case, (20)0x.
Perhaps someone could explain this to me, but did the original foam piece really hit the leading edge of Columbia's wing at 500+ MPH? I don't know how fast the shuttle was going when the foam detached from the booster rocket, but the foam was moving just as fast as the shuttle prior to its detachment, right? Would it have decelerated -500MPH that quickly? I know this is basic physics, but I'm wondering how they calculated the velocity of the foam. 500MPH seems awful fast for the footage that I've seen.
I don't usually reply to my own posts, but this is interesting enough (and hopefully not off-topic) that I'll have a talk with myself.
We probably all know what monitor dot pitch is, but this page explains where it comes from and how it's calculated.
Dot pitch is the distance, center to center, between the two closest dots of the same color; each set of three of the closest red, green, and blue dots is called a triad. Notice that a given dot lies halfway between dots of the two other colors in the row below. Each dot also lies directly above the same color dot two rows below.
If you're wondering where the term "pitch" comes from, I am too. The nearest thing that I could find comes from a rarely-used definition of pitch: the degree of a steep downward slope. This makes sense, since the early calculations of dot pitch assumed a diagonal (corner to corner) measurement.
Let's give credit where credit is due, folks. Take the time to find out who wrote the quote you're posting, or people might think that you're trying to pretend like it's your own.
So to paraphrase from Mark Twain's speech: in other words, eschew obfuscation!
By the way, here's the original quiz given to the 1,500 survey set. The terms from the quiz are below.
I think that the problem is an interesting reflection on the state of technology, and "technologists" themselves. For example, the test includes Megahertz, megapixel, download, web browser and Bluetooth--all good examples (IMO) of naming. "Bluetooth" may be debatable, but it's a distinct name for a distinct technology, and people who use technology should be aware of its capabilities. "Web browser" is another good name; unfortunately, Hollywood's and tech-illiterate journalists' insistence on "surfing the 'net" means that a good name is unknown by the public.
On the dark side of the naming spectrum, the tech industry has given us some gems such as SMS, DVR, MP3 and dot pitch (all from the quiz). SMS and DVR are good examples of trying to pick a generic name that didn't step on any copyright holders' toes, but didn't adequately describe the product either. But perhaps the public is too picky. They learned about VHS, so why can't they learn about DVR.
Dot pitch is a terrible misnomer but its roots are firmly entrenched in the display industry. Perhaps a better term would be "pixel density" or "image clarity," but then it's hard to associate a name like that with a value that gets better as it gets lower.
MP3 is understandable: no one is going to get a friendly, trademarkable name from a group of geeks writing cutting-edge software. But the trademark issue itself it one of the culprits. How many nice names could we have for computer components if the most descriptive words weren't already trademarked?
And finally, it's easy to point out to Houston that we have a problem. It's harder to realize what the problem's origins were and to appreciate the evolution of the computer industry in just fifty years. And it's most difficult to propose a workable solution and carry it through.
It reminds me of the milk commercial where the gun museum curator desparately tries to call the talk show to answer the question about Aaron Burr, only to have his mouth stuffed with cookies and no milk! One of the best commercials ever!
Legal penalties for helping handicapped people?
on
Hacking the XBox
·
· Score: 1
The book was originally going to be published by Wiley, but the company balked when it realized there were stiff legal penalties for helping handicapped people use computers.
Surely this is as good an example of FUD as I've every seen. Too bad it's the "good guys" spreading misinformation.
What terrible timing, too! I was just headed to the nursing home to help read some web pages to a blind guy, but now I'll have to stay away so I don't get stiff legal penalties!
As an early Palm developer I had hoped to get in on the IPO of the wildly-hyped Palm stock. Imagine my millions if I had bought pre-IPO ($20) and sold at the all-time high (~$80)! But I didn't, so I waited for a good time to buy some.
Two years later I was thankful I waited: Palm stock was down 80% and so was Handspring. So I bought at those bargain prices (Palm at $3.69, Handspring at $2.94) thinking how fortunate I was to be getting such a steal. But a year later even my "bargain" was down 80%! I guess I didn't get such a steal after all.
Palm shareholders got screwed by a reverse 1:20 split (meaning that a pre-split Palm would be now be trading at $0.60, not $12.15) and now we're about to get screwed again by getting Palm shares instead of Handspring for nowhere near the price we paid for them.
Oh, well. I guess that's why they call it speculation.
If I remember correctly the female CEO of handspring was one of key developers of the Palm OS.
Somebody please mod the parent down, it's full of inaccuracies. Donna Dubinsky was the business manager of Palm Computing before they were sold to U.S. Robotics. Jeff Hawkins was the key developer of the Palm and the Palm OS.
For more info see this page at Handspring.
What's this! I've returned 13,000+ WU's but my name's not on the list? Oh well, at least I can be happy knowing that I've helped science by BEING IN THE 99.555th PERCENTILE! YEAH!
Why is there no command line only version? We're looking longer term to see what can be done, looking at the lawyers and what's available at each lawyer and how do we make it much closer to the thing the Linux guys have [...]
Woah, did anyone else read it like I did? Good thing Linux doesn't have very many lawyers.
Axis of Evil Expands
Mon Feb 3, 09:37 AM ET
GENEVA (Reuters)
Bitter after being snubbed for membership in the "Axis of Evil," officials from Libya, China and Syria today announced that they had formed the "Axis of Just as Evil," which they said would be "more evil than that silly Iran-Iraq-North Korea axis Mr. Bush warned of in his State of the Union address."
Axis of Evil members, however, immediately dismissed the new Axis as having, for starters, a really dumb name. "They are just as evil...in their dreams!" declared North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. Everybody knows we're the best evils--uh, best at being evil, that is."
Diplomats from Syria denied they were jealous over being excluded, although they conceded that they had at one time asked if they could join the Axis of Evil. "They told us it was full," moped Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
"An axis can't have more than three countries", explained Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. "This is not my rule, it's tradition. In World War II you had Germany, Italy, and Japan in the evil Axis. So, you can only have three, and a secret handshake. (Ours is wicked and cool.)"
International reaction to Bush's Axis of Evil declaration was swift. Within minutes, France unconditionally surrendered. Elsewhere, peer-conscious nations rushed to gain triumvirate status in what has become a game of geopolitical chairs.
Cuba, Sudan and Serbia announced that they had formed the "Axis of Somewhat Evil," forcing Somalia to couple with Uganda and Myanmar in the "Axis of Occasionally Evil," while Bulgaria, Indonesia and Russia established the "Axis of Not So Much Evil Really as Just Generally Disagreeable."
With the criteria suddenly expanding and all the desirable clubs filling up, Sierra Leone, El Salvador, and Rwanda applied to be called the "Axis of Countries That Aren't Really Evil but Won't Be Asked to Host the Olympics, Either."
While wondering if the other nations of the world weren't perhaps poking fun, a cautious Bush administration granted approval for most axes, although it rejected the establishment of the "Axis of Countries Whose Names End in 'Guay", accusing one of its members of filing a false application. Senior officials from Paraguay, Uruguay, and Mexiguay denied the charges.
Is OpenOffice really there yet? During our final presentation last week in a CS class, a fellow was trying to explain to the teacher why his entire presentation featured scrunched up, barely legible text. "I created it in OpenOffice and brought it into PowerPoint," he explained, as the class laughed at at him.
I'm not saying that it's not a good product, but is it ready for prime time?
The good news is that those who bought a Linksys access point now have a Cisco access point for 1/2 of the price;)
The not-so-good news but more likely news is that Cisco will decide not to warranty Linksys products and will introduce new, Cisco-branded products at a much higher price.
Well, here's to hoping that Microsoft won't buy Logitech, and Sun won't try to acquire Matrox.
It's not really necessary. If you look at this Dell monitor, for example, it only has a.5" frame around it. We have a few around the office and they're very nice. The frame is so thin that Dell can hardly fit their logo in it!
We packed the payload back up and added a conspicuous sign that read "Harmless Amateur Radio Experiment," lest some farmer see the payload land in his field and, fearing some terrorist device, call the authorities.
I would've written the message in Arabic! (But then, I'm mischevious like that.)
I had hoped that you could make the distinction between cheap RFID tags for mass-produced items, (like clothes, candy bars and electronics) and higher-end tags for more important items (like vehicle tires). Sadly, your results were disappointing, and now I must end your Turing Test.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, most people's passwords are a string that they easily remember + some numbers. It's much easier to remember blahblah123 than to look at the blobs every time you want to login and reconstruct "frherotspsmt..." from the images.
Perhaps this system could be used to help people remember forgotten passwords, like being able to select 5 of out 10 images in the correct order.
If you look at the Sony product page, it says that it uses Graffiti 2 (Palm's rebranded version of Jot).
As others have pointed out, a la previous languages like FORTRAN, Algol and LISP, it refers to C++ and the year the spec is expected to be completed--in this case, (20)0x.
The San Fran Chronicle has a short MPEG available here.
Perhaps someone could explain this to me, but did the original foam piece really hit the leading edge of Columbia's wing at 500+ MPH? I don't know how fast the shuttle was going when the foam detached from the booster rocket, but the foam was moving just as fast as the shuttle prior to its detachment, right? Would it have decelerated -500MPH that quickly? I know this is basic physics, but I'm wondering how they calculated the velocity of the foam. 500MPH seems awful fast for the footage that I've seen.
We probably all know what monitor dot pitch is, but this page explains where it comes from and how it's calculated.
Dot pitch is the distance, center to center, between the two closest dots of the same color; each set of three of the closest red, green, and blue dots is called a triad. Notice that a given dot lies halfway between dots of the two other colors in the row below. Each dot also lies directly above the same color dot two rows below.
If you're wondering where the term "pitch" comes from, I am too. The nearest thing that I could find comes from a rarely-used definition of pitch: the degree of a steep downward slope. This makes sense, since the early calculations of dot pitch assumed a diagonal (corner to corner) measurement.
So to paraphrase from Mark Twain's speech: in other words, eschew obfuscation!
I think that the problem is an interesting reflection on the state of technology, and "technologists" themselves. For example, the test includes Megahertz, megapixel, download, web browser and Bluetooth--all good examples (IMO) of naming. "Bluetooth" may be debatable, but it's a distinct name for a distinct technology, and people who use technology should be aware of its capabilities. "Web browser" is another good name; unfortunately, Hollywood's and tech-illiterate journalists' insistence on "surfing the 'net" means that a good name is unknown by the public.
On the dark side of the naming spectrum, the tech industry has given us some gems such as SMS, DVR, MP3 and dot pitch (all from the quiz). SMS and DVR are good examples of trying to pick a generic name that didn't step on any copyright holders' toes, but didn't adequately describe the product either. But perhaps the public is too picky. They learned about VHS, so why can't they learn about DVR.
Dot pitch is a terrible misnomer but its roots are firmly entrenched in the display industry. Perhaps a better term would be "pixel density" or "image clarity," but then it's hard to associate a name like that with a value that gets better as it gets lower.
MP3 is understandable: no one is going to get a friendly, trademarkable name from a group of geeks writing cutting-edge software. But the trademark issue itself it one of the culprits. How many nice names could we have for computer components if the most descriptive words weren't already trademarked?
And finally, it's easy to point out to Houston that we have a problem. It's harder to realize what the problem's origins were and to appreciate the evolution of the computer industry in just fifty years. And it's most difficult to propose a workable solution and carry it through.
It reminds me of the milk commercial where the gun museum curator desparately tries to call the talk show to answer the question about Aaron Burr, only to have his mouth stuffed with cookies and no milk! One of the best commercials ever!
Surely this is as good an example of FUD as I've every seen. Too bad it's the "good guys" spreading misinformation.
What terrible timing, too! I was just headed to the nursing home to help read some web pages to a blind guy, but now I'll have to stay away so I don't get stiff legal penalties!
Seems ironic that you should buy something to be part of something free. ;-)
It's been shown that monkeys and typewriters are not a good combination for creating anything.
...right after they realy should masster the skil of speling!
Two years later I was thankful I waited: Palm stock was down 80% and so was Handspring. So I bought at those bargain prices (Palm at $3.69, Handspring at $2.94) thinking how fortunate I was to be getting such a steal. But a year later even my "bargain" was down 80%! I guess I didn't get such a steal after all.
Palm shareholders got screwed by a reverse 1:20 split (meaning that a pre-split Palm would be now be trading at $0.60, not $12.15) and now we're about to get screwed again by getting Palm shares instead of Handspring for nowhere near the price we paid for them.
Oh, well. I guess that's why they call it speculation.
Somebody please mod the parent down, it's full of inaccuracies. Donna Dubinsky was the business manager of Palm Computing before they were sold to U.S. Robotics. Jeff Hawkins was the key developer of the Palm and the Palm OS. For more info see this page at Handspring.
What, this is about science?
Yeah! That's, like, great, dude! Now we can use our phones to withdraw cash!
We're looking longer term to see what can be done, looking at the lawyers and what's available at each lawyer and how do we make it much closer to the thing the Linux guys have [...]
Woah, did anyone else read it like I did? Good thing Linux doesn't have very many lawyers.
Axis of Evil Expands Mon Feb 3, 09:37 AM ET GENEVA (Reuters) Bitter after being snubbed for membership in the "Axis of Evil," officials from Libya, China and Syria today announced that they had formed the "Axis of Just as Evil," which they said would be "more evil than that silly Iran-Iraq-North Korea axis Mr. Bush warned of in his State of the Union address." Axis of Evil members, however, immediately dismissed the new Axis as having, for starters, a really dumb name. "They are just as evil...in their dreams!" declared North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. Everybody knows we're the best evils--uh, best at being evil, that is." Diplomats from Syria denied they were jealous over being excluded, although they conceded that they had at one time asked if they could join the Axis of Evil. "They told us it was full," moped Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. "An axis can't have more than three countries", explained Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. "This is not my rule, it's tradition. In World War II you had Germany, Italy, and Japan in the evil Axis. So, you can only have three, and a secret handshake. (Ours is wicked and cool.)" International reaction to Bush's Axis of Evil declaration was swift. Within minutes, France unconditionally surrendered. Elsewhere, peer-conscious nations rushed to gain triumvirate status in what has become a game of geopolitical chairs. Cuba, Sudan and Serbia announced that they had formed the "Axis of Somewhat Evil," forcing Somalia to couple with Uganda and Myanmar in the "Axis of Occasionally Evil," while Bulgaria, Indonesia and Russia established the "Axis of Not So Much Evil Really as Just Generally Disagreeable." With the criteria suddenly expanding and all the desirable clubs filling up, Sierra Leone, El Salvador, and Rwanda applied to be called the "Axis of Countries That Aren't Really Evil but Won't Be Asked to Host the Olympics, Either." While wondering if the other nations of the world weren't perhaps poking fun, a cautious Bush administration granted approval for most axes, although it rejected the establishment of the "Axis of Countries Whose Names End in 'Guay", accusing one of its members of filing a false application. Senior officials from Paraguay, Uruguay, and Mexiguay denied the charges.
Is OpenOffice really there yet? During our final presentation last week in a CS class, a fellow was trying to explain to the teacher why his entire presentation featured scrunched up, barely legible text. "I created it in OpenOffice and brought it into PowerPoint," he explained, as the class laughed at at him.
I'm not saying that it's not a good product, but is it ready for prime time?
The not-so-good news but more likely news is that Cisco will decide not to warranty Linksys products and will introduce new, Cisco-branded products at a much higher price.
Well, here's to hoping that Microsoft won't buy Logitech, and Sun won't try to acquire Matrox.
It's not really necessary. If you look at this Dell monitor, for example, it only has a .5" frame around it. We have a few around the office and they're very nice. The frame is so thin that Dell can hardly fit their logo in it!
I would've written the message in Arabic! (But then, I'm mischevious like that.)
I had hoped that you could make the distinction between cheap RFID tags for mass-produced items, (like clothes, candy bars and electronics) and higher-end tags for more important items (like vehicle tires). Sadly, your results were disappointing, and now I must end your Turing Test.