The bank knows the balance, and keeps an authoritative record. Your smartcard contains a private key, and circuitry for encryption and decryption. Your bank keeps your public key in their records.
1) You put your smartcard in the ATM reader. The ATM reader says to the card, "Oh, you say you're Elwood P Dowd? Well then encrypt this message for me: zxcvblptd"
2) The smart card encrypts the challenge with your private key and returns the encrypted response to the bank.
3) The bank decrypts the message with your public key, which proves that only you could have encrypted it.
4) The bank authorizes your ATM machine to make transactions on your behalf.
Make sense now? It's just a simple improvement to ATM cards. A better way to authenticate your identity. (I would suggest that we need a similar system to authenticate our identity ever time we currently use social security numbers. Then we could admit the fact that social security numbers are essentially public information anymore.)
My dad, and the other guy with my name, BOTH could have viewed the message body. We might be better than machines when reading the message body, but given the 200 spams my dad gets every day, he chooses not to. So it doesn't matter.
Even with an autopreview window: My dad will see 20 new spams, shift-select all of them, and delete without viewing. This is learned behavior for him.
Yes, you are correct: the artificial intelligence embodied in these anti-spam solutions are not more accurate than a human who actually reads the message body. But they are still better than humans at sorting mail.
Or your dad is an idiot who doesn't know how to route his email.
But I was only contesting the great-grandparent poster, who said that humans are by definition 100% accurate.
While my dad may be an idiot, he is also human. I am correct, great-grandparent poster is incorrect, and you are off topic. As far as I can tell, I've never deleted an email I meant to keep either. But you and I aren't the only people worth discussing.
If you see a strange name in your inbox with an odd title, that might be a Nigerian businessman, or it might be your long lost Nigerian brother.
I recently tried to order a t-shirt from this guy for a band he used to be in. I found his band because we have the same (semi-uncommon) name. So, he got an email From: himself. I had to send him two emails because he deleted the first one assuming it was spam.
I ordered some RAM for my dad a while back. He gets 200 spam emails a day (email addy in resume & web page), and he deleted the confirmation email from the RAM vendor. The RAM never shipped, and it took us a week to figure out that there was a problem.
People make mistakes all the time. Why is this an unexpected result? People are jackasses. This should be obvious.
Hardly. He was team lead for a Level 1 callcenter. Just because you can't get promoted out of the janitorial staff doesn't mean you have to rag on everyone else.
Quit ragging on the janitorial staff. I certainly can't see anything more creative or honorable about working in a call center.
Based on the dude's stated preferences, I wasn't about to recommend Thomas Pynchon. The only SF author I'd recommend to a reader of fine literature</sarcasm> is William Gibson, and I'm well aware I'd get a bit of argument about that, too.
I read Parable of the Sower, and I think it makes an excellent novel for young adults. That is 10x more than I could say for any of the few books I've read by the authors he mentions. She is a cut above space opera.
Craigslist is popular with small employers. Small employers, taken together, are the largest employer in the nation (maybe not bigger than the gov't).
Craigslist is IMHO an excellent resource not mentioned by the article. Perhaps it does not have the same pitfalls as Monster 'n' the other crappy job sites.
Well if you're going to look at the context, you may as well look at the article.
You can't compare most newspaper job listings to online job boards because most newspaper job listings are run by the same job board.
The article is very fair, provides information that I did not have access to otherwise, and does not promote headhunters in any way. The only thing it promotes is (shocker) finding jobs via personal networking.
Try Iain M. Banks, anything of his, and then look me in the eye and tell me scifi sucks. Ditto for Stephen Baxter, or David Brin, or Greg Bear or Gregory Benford. Hmm...that's a lot of B's....
Also, it would have been helpful if the reviewer named another author or novel that he felt stood the test of time. That would give us a data point so that we could have some idea if we could trust his judgment of fresh creative force.
That said, I'm slightly troubled myself by what appears to be moral relativist rationalization for criminal behavior in your post. "the concept of good guy is a highly relative one." is a curious statement. Police officers don't get much choice in what laws they enforce... they are oath-bound to enforce all of them equally, without regard for position or rank...
It makes more sense if you take KFG's whole sentence:
Personally I've never met a cop who didn't join the force explicitly because he/she wanted to one of the good guys, but the concept of good guy is a highly relative one.
My friend joined the SFPD because he wanted to put rapists in jail. He left the SFPD because he found out that the best he might ever get is to beat them senseless. Hopefully, we can both agree that the first option is "good guy" and the second option is not.
There were people in his department that would also consider themselves the "good guy" when they beat the rapist senseless. The concept of a "good guy" is thus relative. That's a dangerous thing about cops. My friend could see himself changing his mind on the subject. That's a very dangerous thing about cops. The time they spend on the job dealing with criminals that they cannot put in jail is caustic to their emotional well being. It will lead them to consider people criminals when they are not. As I said to you elsewhere, it is a slippery slope from dividing people into "regular citizens" and "scofflaws" all the way down to the bottom. Many cops that were initially well-intentioned may eventually come to do horrible things. Dunno if that's exactly what KFG was trying to say, but...
Also:
Indeed, and thus my personal feeling that police officers should be held to a high standard, and washed out if they do not or cannot meet it.
Well, that just doesn't happen here. 'Till that day, I'll distrust every cop I ever meet. I am highly skeptical that San Francisco's condition is unique. Why are people incensed to the point of creating Denver Copwatch? Where are all the stories here on slashdot of police abuses coming from? Do all those "scofflaws" really deserve to be in jail? This is a geek newsgroup. I realize we have black geeks present, but imagine what the response would be like if we were talking to a predominantly black audience!
And, all that said, I couldn't blame the current situation on the actual police officers. The solution would have to be a political one. And I guarantee you, 99% of SFPD cops would hate it. But that's ok for them, because it'll never come.
It's not a matter of looking like anything... it's a mindset, and attitude; you have it all the way. I'm not talking about attitude on the cop's part... I'm talking about the "F*ck the police" attitude that people who view the police as their enemy typically exhibit.
Funny, 'cause I've never had trouble from a cop. I dress nicely, shave every day, and speak politely to police officers. I'm telling you: I *do* slip under the radar. I can control my attitude just fine, thank you.
There is no legal difference between "regular citizens" and "some kind of scofflaw". You have to treat them both the same. vs. Nooo... there is a substantial legal difference.
Then we're not talking about the same thing. Let me put it this way: most acquaintance rapists, white collar criminals, upper class drug dealers, etc. will never be accused of their crime. They will treat police officers with the utmost respect. They may not even consider the police to be their enemy. They would be, to you, a "regular citizen."
Someone with an attitude, darker complexion, lower class diction, and an eighth of weed in their pocket has good cause to fear a uniformed officer. Especially if he's walking around in that upper class drug dealer's neighborhood. Agreed?
You're referring to drugs, of course. Here's the thing: if you're a regular citizen who's smoking a bit of weed...
No, you're missing my point. Consider the larger class of Crimes Rich White Men Commit. My crime (felony, I believe) is intellectual property theft. But please, ignore that for a second. I'm just trying to say that many people who have committed my kind of crime do not hold a grudge against police officers. I believe my anti-cop sentiment to be at least somewhat based on evidence, and I'm just saying that I don't want you to write it off due to my criminal behavior.
I don't know what cops you're used to dealing with, but that's never been part of any department I've been involved with.
A friend of mine trained to become an officer for the SFPD. He was on the job for a few months, but he quit because he couldn't stand what it was doing to his opinion of humankind. And because he couldn't bust the people that he felt deserved it. And because it was too corrupt. They had to let go a few people on drug busts because they couldn't keep the evidence locker from getting robbed by employees. WTF does that tell you?
"Tyrone on the Parade committee" just didn't sound as good, did it? (It's nice to think that "Barabara on the Parade committee" would probably work, but unfortunately "Taneesha on the Parade committee" still won't.)
Let me tell you how a cop views this: virtually all of the people who hate cops have had prior run-ins with them... ie. they are some kind of scofflaw, or associate with such folks
You're long gone, aren't you. And no, I've never been arrested. I've also never committed a crime that would put me in contact with a uniform. I commit white crimes. I can commit my crimes with impunity and be confident that I'll never be arrested, because I don't look like "some kind of scofflaw" to you.
Maybe it's my prior law enforcement background talking, but I really don't see the problem here.
Yeah, yeah maybe.
The law doesn't exist to hassle regular citizens... the officer needs to have reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed, and if he does, then he can detain to ascertain identity.
That's exactly the point. Your "law enforcement background" has led you to dehumanize the people that you interact with in the course of your job. There is no legal difference between "regular citizens" and "some kind of scofflaw". You have to treat them both the same. The difference is in your head. And it is a slippery slope from your current opinion all the way down to "fajitagate," broomhandles, and 44 bullets in some poor black motherfucker.
Sheesh... as long as he's polite and just doing his job, what's wrong with telling a proactive police officer your name? There's something called common courtesy, and police officers should be eligible to receive it. Why is a cop ineligible? Because he works for "the man" instead of McDonalds?
Yes, actually: Anything you tell to a cop will be used against you if at all possible. Tell me it isn't the truth. Don't get me wrong, I'll never pull the bullshit that Hiines pulled. I'll also never give any information to a cop unless I have to.
I never used to be so anti-cop. Then a friend of mine became a cop. My whole circle of friends simultaneously gained infintely greater understanding of the heinous shit they have to deal with, and lost all potential to ever trust a police officer. I know *why* y'all dehumanize the people you interact with, but that doesn't make it ok. If you think my anti-cop sentiments are due to criminal activity on my part, please consider the possibility that my kind of crimes are very common among "regular citizens."
Also consider this: GW Bush used to be a habitual criminal. This is accepted fact (and it's ok with me). Now think to yourself: Would GW or the world be better off if he had spent a few years in jail for the crimes he committed? Even though I don't like him as a president, I certainly wouldn't argue that he should have gone to jail.
Now think about all the people that are in jail for exactly the same crimes. Should they be in jail? Just because you think they're "some kind of scofflaw"?
You either have a vast wealth of ignorance on this subject, or you have no sense of perspective whatsoever.
Both could be true, and it still wouldn't be flamebait. You've taken the correct tack: correct him, don't mod him down unless discussing it is a waste of everyone's time.
Since I'm sure many people "have a vast wealth of ignorance on this subject", I don't think it's a waste of everyone's time.
In that case Darwinism goes directly against modern humanity. Just because we evolved due to survival of the fittest doesn't mean that we are currently under pressure from a fitness constraint.
Darwinism does not entail Social Darwinism. Go read "The Selfish Gene." I'll take Richard Dawkins' opinion on Darwinian evolution before I'll take yours. Nothing personal.
Semi-interestingly, the USSR had problems with Darwinian evolution too. Obviously not because of belief in creationism, but because they felt it went against communist ideals.
Of course, it doesn't. But it's funny how the two superpowers both had so much trouble coming to terms with such a simple concept.
Slashdot Mirror
Other comments have explained it pretty clearly:
The bank knows the balance, and keeps an authoritative record. Your smartcard contains a private key, and circuitry for encryption and decryption. Your bank keeps your public key in their records.
1) You put your smartcard in the ATM reader. The ATM reader says to the card, "Oh, you say you're Elwood P Dowd? Well then encrypt this message for me: zxcvblptd"
2) The smart card encrypts the challenge with your private key and returns the encrypted response to the bank.
3) The bank decrypts the message with your public key, which proves that only you could have encrypted it.
4) The bank authorizes your ATM machine to make transactions on your behalf.
Make sense now? It's just a simple improvement to ATM cards. A better way to authenticate your identity. (I would suggest that we need a similar system to authenticate our identity ever time we currently use social security numbers. Then we could admit the fact that social security numbers are essentially public information anymore.)
No, I'm not missing the point.
My dad, and the other guy with my name, BOTH could have viewed the message body. We might be better than machines when reading the message body, but given the 200 spams my dad gets every day, he chooses not to. So it doesn't matter.
Even with an autopreview window: My dad will see 20 new spams, shift-select all of them, and delete without viewing. This is learned behavior for him.
Yes, you are correct: the artificial intelligence embodied in these anti-spam solutions are not more accurate than a human who actually reads the message body. But they are still better than humans at sorting mail.
Ok, maybe I'm full of shit. Wouldn't be the first time. I'm sorry for talking so authoritatively.
If this happens to you, I guarantee that you will never recover your cash. It does not matter if they catch anyone.
The goal of smartcards is to make it impossible to "read everything on the way in".
There is never any need to read the private key. There is no "special code" to read the private key. The key is permanently burned in.
Or your dad is an idiot who doesn't know how to route his email.
But I was only contesting the great-grandparent poster, who said that humans are by definition 100% accurate.
While my dad may be an idiot, he is also human. I am correct, great-grandparent poster is incorrect, and you are off topic. As far as I can tell, I've never deleted an email I meant to keep either. But you and I aren't the only people worth discussing.
No, humans are not 100%.
If you see a strange name in your inbox with an odd title, that might be a Nigerian businessman, or it might be your long lost Nigerian brother.
I recently tried to order a t-shirt from this guy for a band he used to be in. I found his band because we have the same (semi-uncommon) name. So, he got an email From: himself. I had to send him two emails because he deleted the first one assuming it was spam.
I ordered some RAM for my dad a while back. He gets 200 spam emails a day (email addy in resume & web page), and he deleted the confirmation email from the RAM vendor. The RAM never shipped, and it took us a week to figure out that there was a problem.
People make mistakes all the time. Why is this an unexpected result? People are jackasses. This should be obvious.
Hardly. He was team lead for a Level 1 callcenter. Just because you can't get promoted out of the janitorial staff doesn't mean you have to rag on everyone else.
Quit ragging on the janitorial staff. I certainly can't see anything more creative or honorable about working in a call center.
Based on the dude's stated preferences, I wasn't about to recommend Thomas Pynchon. The only SF author I'd recommend to a reader of fine literature</sarcasm> is William Gibson, and I'm well aware I'd get a bit of argument about that, too.
I read Parable of the Sower, and I think it makes an excellent novel for young adults. That is 10x more than I could say for any of the few books I've read by the authors he mentions. She is a cut above space opera.
Craigslist is popular with small employers. Small employers, taken together, are the largest employer in the nation (maybe not bigger than the gov't).
Craigslist is IMHO an excellent resource not mentioned by the article. Perhaps it does not have the same pitfalls as Monster 'n' the other crappy job sites.
Well if you're going to look at the context, you may as well look at the article.
You can't compare most newspaper job listings to online job boards because most newspaper job listings are run by the same job board.
The article is very fair, provides information that I did not have access to otherwise, and does not promote headhunters in any way. The only thing it promotes is (shocker) finding jobs via personal networking.
Try Iain M. Banks, anything of his, and then look me in the eye and tell me scifi sucks. Ditto for Stephen Baxter, or David Brin, or Greg Bear or Gregory Benford. Hmm...that's a lot of B's....
That's also a lot of men. Try Octavia Butler.
Thank you. (Score:5, Amen)
Also, it would have been helpful if the reviewer named another author or novel that he felt stood the test of time. That would give us a data point so that we could have some idea if we could trust his judgment of fresh creative force.
Except in content creation, where it's doing fine.
That said, I'm slightly troubled myself by what appears to be moral relativist rationalization for criminal behavior in your post. "the concept of good guy is a highly relative one." is a curious statement. Police officers don't get much choice in what laws they enforce... they are oath-bound to enforce all of them equally, without regard for position or rank...
It makes more sense if you take KFG's whole sentence:
Personally I've never met a cop who didn't join the force explicitly because he/she wanted to one of the good guys, but the concept of good guy is a highly relative one.
My friend joined the SFPD because he wanted to put rapists in jail. He left the SFPD because he found out that the best he might ever get is to beat them senseless. Hopefully, we can both agree that the first option is "good guy" and the second option is not.
There were people in his department that would also consider themselves the "good guy" when they beat the rapist senseless. The concept of a "good guy" is thus relative. That's a dangerous thing about cops. My friend could see himself changing his mind on the subject. That's a very dangerous thing about cops. The time they spend on the job dealing with criminals that they cannot put in jail is caustic to their emotional well being. It will lead them to consider people criminals when they are not. As I said to you elsewhere, it is a slippery slope from dividing people into "regular citizens" and "scofflaws" all the way down to the bottom. Many cops that were initially well-intentioned may eventually come to do horrible things. Dunno if that's exactly what KFG was trying to say, but...
Also:
Indeed, and thus my personal feeling that police officers should be held to a high standard, and washed out if they do not or cannot meet it.
Well, that just doesn't happen here. 'Till that day, I'll distrust every cop I ever meet. I am highly skeptical that San Francisco's condition is unique. Why are people incensed to the point of creating Denver Copwatch? Where are all the stories here on slashdot of police abuses coming from? Do all those "scofflaws" really deserve to be in jail? This is a geek newsgroup. I realize we have black geeks present, but imagine what the response would be like if we were talking to a predominantly black audience!
And, all that said, I couldn't blame the current situation on the actual police officers. The solution would have to be a political one. And I guarantee you, 99% of SFPD cops would hate it. But that's ok for them, because it'll never come.
I'll point out that Elwood P Dowd is not my real name. Please, no one go arresting Jimmy Stewart's corpse in my stead.
It's not a matter of looking like anything... it's a mindset, and attitude; you have it all the way. I'm not talking about attitude on the cop's part... I'm talking about the "F*ck the police" attitude that people who view the police as their enemy typically exhibit.
Funny, 'cause I've never had trouble from a cop. I dress nicely, shave every day, and speak politely to police officers. I'm telling you: I *do* slip under the radar. I can control my attitude just fine, thank you.
There is no legal difference between "regular citizens" and "some kind of scofflaw". You have to treat them both the same.
vs.
Nooo... there is a substantial legal difference.
Then we're not talking about the same thing. Let me put it this way: most acquaintance rapists, white collar criminals, upper class drug dealers, etc. will never be accused of their crime. They will treat police officers with the utmost respect. They may not even consider the police to be their enemy. They would be, to you, a "regular citizen."
Someone with an attitude, darker complexion, lower class diction, and an eighth of weed in their pocket has good cause to fear a uniformed officer. Especially if he's walking around in that upper class drug dealer's neighborhood. Agreed?
You're referring to drugs, of course. Here's the thing: if you're a regular citizen who's smoking a bit of weed...
No, you're missing my point. Consider the larger class of Crimes Rich White Men Commit. My crime (felony, I believe) is intellectual property theft. But please, ignore that for a second. I'm just trying to say that many people who have committed my kind of crime do not hold a grudge against police officers. I believe my anti-cop sentiment to be at least somewhat based on evidence, and I'm just saying that I don't want you to write it off due to my criminal behavior.
I don't know what cops you're used to dealing with, but that's never been part of any department I've been involved with.
A friend of mine trained to become an officer for the SFPD. He was on the job for a few months, but he quit because he couldn't stand what it was doing to his opinion of humankind. And because he couldn't bust the people that he felt deserved it. And because it was too corrupt. They had to let go a few people on drug busts because they couldn't keep the evidence locker from getting robbed by employees. WTF does that tell you?
you're "Jim on the Parade committee"
"Tyrone on the Parade committee" just didn't sound as good, did it? (It's nice to think that "Barabara on the Parade committee" would probably work, but unfortunately "Taneesha on the Parade committee" still won't.)
Let me tell you how a cop views this: virtually all of the people who hate cops have had prior run-ins with them... ie. they are some kind of scofflaw, or associate with such folks
You're long gone, aren't you. And no, I've never been arrested. I've also never committed a crime that would put me in contact with a uniform. I commit white crimes. I can commit my crimes with impunity and be confident that I'll never be arrested, because I don't look like "some kind of scofflaw" to you.
Maybe it's my prior law enforcement background talking, but I really don't see the problem here.
Yeah, yeah maybe.
The law doesn't exist to hassle regular citizens... the officer needs to have reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed, and if he does, then he can detain to ascertain identity.
That's exactly the point. Your "law enforcement background" has led you to dehumanize the people that you interact with in the course of your job. There is no legal difference between "regular citizens" and "some kind of scofflaw". You have to treat them both the same. The difference is in your head. And it is a slippery slope from your current opinion all the way down to "fajitagate," broomhandles, and 44 bullets in some poor black motherfucker.
Sheesh... as long as he's polite and just doing his job, what's wrong with telling a proactive police officer your name? There's something called common courtesy, and police officers should be eligible to receive it. Why is a cop ineligible? Because he works for "the man" instead of McDonalds?
Yes, actually: Anything you tell to a cop will be used against you if at all possible. Tell me it isn't the truth. Don't get me wrong, I'll never pull the bullshit that Hiines pulled. I'll also never give any information to a cop unless I have to.
I never used to be so anti-cop. Then a friend of mine became a cop. My whole circle of friends simultaneously gained infintely greater understanding of the heinous shit they have to deal with, and lost all potential to ever trust a police officer. I know *why* y'all dehumanize the people you interact with, but that doesn't make it ok. If you think my anti-cop sentiments are due to criminal activity on my part, please consider the possibility that my kind of crimes are very common among "regular citizens."
Also consider this: GW Bush used to be a habitual criminal. This is accepted fact (and it's ok with me). Now think to yourself: Would GW or the world be better off if he had spent a few years in jail for the crimes he committed? Even though I don't like him as a president, I certainly wouldn't argue that he should have gone to jail.
Now think about all the people that are in jail for exactly the same crimes. Should they be in jail? Just because you think they're "some kind of scofflaw"?
You've got a little star next to your name.
You paid to say that?
You either have a vast wealth of ignorance on this subject, or you have no sense of perspective whatsoever.
Both could be true, and it still wouldn't be flamebait. You've taken the correct tack: correct him, don't mod him down unless discussing it is a waste of everyone's time.
Since I'm sure many people "have a vast wealth of ignorance on this subject", I don't think it's a waste of everyone's time.
In that case Darwinism goes directly against modern humanity. Just because we evolved due to survival of the fittest doesn't mean that we are currently under pressure from a fitness constraint.
Darwinism does not entail Social Darwinism. Go read "The Selfish Gene." I'll take Richard Dawkins' opinion on Darwinian evolution before I'll take yours. Nothing personal.
Ah, crap. Fucking hippies.
I'm really interested if that's the case. Have any evidence to back that up?
Semi-interestingly, the USSR had problems with Darwinian evolution too. Obviously not because of belief in creationism, but because they felt it went against communist ideals.
Of course, it doesn't. But it's funny how the two superpowers both had so much trouble coming to terms with such a simple concept.