What are the odds of something like this actually hapening? How many thieves are there out there with the technical know how to pull this off, compared to the public at large? one hundred? one million?
Most places I know of keep the gift cards at least out of sight, but if they were to keep them out in the open, well that would be sort of stupid, given the scenario.
heck, I even wonder about the telphone cards, which I never use. I would have to go to a store to look at one to see if they have visible numbers on them.
I thought this story was going to be about the quest for a product which would take a company's press release and translate the PR spin into something meaningful
Just remember that the entire universe is based on spin. Down to the smallest bit.
It would be horrible if the two varieties were somehow related.;-)
(For the record, yes I have registered a couple of times. And forgotten the password.
The point being of course, that for a password to be easy to remember, it does not have to be a literal word. It can be based on some other factor that is easily memorized, not based on words at all.
Most likely it one of the tales from Draco's Tavern, by Larry Niven. Conversation was with a Chirpsithtra, perhaps?
for some reason Callahan's Crosstime Saloon now comes to mind, but I could be wrong. It feels more like a subplot atmosperic thing than a main plot point.
I recall one SF story in which a a conservation talks place between a modern human and a very very long lived member of a race from space.
One telling point of the conversion was the space aliens nostalgia for the microbial (or some such thing) civilization he remembered from one of his earlier visits to earth.
Sadly I do not remember the title or the author. It feels like a bar conversation, but that may be wrong.
[...] embed radio frequency identification tags into the very fibers of euro bank notes by 2005, EE Times has learned. [...] would create an instant mass market for RFID chips, which have long sought profitable application. [...] no bank notes in the world today employ such a technology
I wonder how they would survive spin, wash, dry, and iron cycles. or drying in a microwave oven.
Their has got to be a wide range of applications that would ruin the chips. I can see civil rights volunteers subotaging currency in the safety of their homes, a sort of grassroots thing.
the thousand lira notes in italy used to have a thin silver wire embedded in them. It was really easy to pull those out.
Another look at the fabulous CAPTAIN VIDEO miniature sets and models of Russell, Haberstroh and Persanis. We recall that the Video Rangers had a spaceport in an isolated mountainous region of earth, and another on an asteroid. We suspect this set served for both; note the terrestrial pine trees on the left edge of the set, and the wild "alien" vegetation on the right edge. Choosing the proper camera angle would switch from earth to asteroids
Ahhhh, the sheer elegance of simple set design. These days it would all be several hundred hours of CGI dev time, depending on where you were going
Hot is an understatement. As I write this (11pm), its 31 degrees outside. It got up to like, 45 today. I knew today would suck when I woke up at 6:30 and it was already above 30 degrees.Sounds remarkably similar to my forecast, except yours is in Centigrade, and mine is in Farenheit.
As reported a couple of weeks ago, Santa was pulled in for questioning because of potentially suspicious activities in Canada. See this report in Yahoo.
I understand he was held under lock and key, but he must of had a good lawyer and made bail. Although He'll now be in trouble for fleeing the jurisdiction.
As seen earlier on another channel. (about half way down the page) last thursday, the LA Time had a story on it.
Also, Futurist Paul Saffo had the idea that "As some people wring their hands about the invasion of privacy and civil liberty, a whole other generation is going to go, 'Cool! I've always wanted to embed technology in my body.' It's going to be fashion. One sure sign that teenagers will love it is if it terrifies their parents.' "
Well to get the same behavior from a collection of digital components would take a a larger amount of computing power and programming.
Where as with a simple analog computing model, balancing circuit levels allows the component level to be far less dense and the design far more efficient.This leads us to the conclusion that analog design are far more efficient, But this is natural in specialized machines of any type.
There was this old story about a company doing something similar with lasers between skyscapers, etc. I suppose the usual fog and bird problems apply. And maybe some mean spirited neighborhood kids with a couple of balloons
Personally, I wouldn't mind a way to do this sort of thing by shortwave. It would be great for WAN applications between cities [shrug]
I suspect (though I could be wrong) that there would be some kind of key-signing of the update patch that's done by MS and then checked by XP before installing the same.
I am sure that someone could human engineer the error messages. and since they would actually never go to MS, but maybe to some Bogus Site, like Microsoft-security.com some folks could be fooled by this. I am thinking of the Pay-Pal Scam that was running around a few days back, using simple email. It wouldn't be that hard for people who were expert to fudge something to send a user to La la land, with appropriate dialogs, disclaimers, etc. etc.
What is interesting is that we may be looking for the Wrong Stuff;
if you look at the kind of signals that we're currently using, sort of spread-spectrum signals and things like that, they're very complicated, and they're completely unlike the kind of things we look for in SETI. The kind of things we look for in SETI are signals that are just what are called narrow-band signals, that are on one spot on the radio dial. [...] The advantage of that is that it makes it really easy to find the signal because all the energy is in a small band so it really stands out as a big spike of energy. Whereas if you spread it out over five megahertz, like a TV signal, then the energy's spread all over the band and it's very hard to find. But on the other hand, the actual signals that we use are spread out, more and more. And ET will be at least as advanced as we are, so you might say, "Well, why would they make those narrow-band signals?" And the answer is, probably: most of the time, they don't. [...] (but) there's lots of things that would have narrow-band components in the signal. So that's what we look for
Let's face it, if EM transmission goes the way of the Napoleonic Semaphore system, then we will not have a chance to intercept the new technology.
"Microsoft explained that a new feature of Windows XP can automatically download the free fix, which takes several minutes, and prompt consumers to install it. "
Nevermind that such an exploit could also be used to do just the same thing and send people off to download a "patch" form a psuedo MS site.
Suddenly people are taking seriously the idea that MS can present a problem for national security, when this was dismissed as a trollish comment before.
The fantasy is the unlikely end result with Bill Gates and buddies being arrested for treason for the software. yes it is just a fantasy.,p.But isn't Xmas the time of year for dreams?;)
Slashdot Mirror
aloty of folks are looking to figure out how to run it in reverse.
who ever invents the first holodeck gets to make a lot of money.:-)
Most places I know of keep the gift cards at least out of sight, but if they were to keep them out in the open, well that would be sort of stupid, given the scenario.
heck, I even wonder about the telphone cards, which I never use. I would have to go to a store to look at one to see if they have visible numbers on them.
Just remember that the entire universe is based on spin. Down to the smallest bit.
It would be horrible if the two varieties were somehow related. ;-)
Remember, we now have to deal with the possiblity of using large aircraft as weapons :-(
and Silos are designed to take pretty heavy hits and physical attacks.
The point being of course, that for a password to be easy to remember, it does not have to be a literal word. It can be based on some other factor that is easily memorized, not based on words at all.
for some reason Callahan's Crosstime Saloon now comes to mind, but I could be wrong. It feels more like a subplot atmosperic thing than a main plot point.
[shrug]
One telling point of the conversion was the space aliens nostalgia for the microbial (or some such thing) civilization he remembered from one of his earlier visits to earth.
Sadly I do not remember the title or the author. It feels like a bar conversation, but that may be wrong.
I wonder how they would survive spin, wash, dry, and iron cycles. or drying in a microwave oven.
Their has got to be a wide range of applications that would ruin the chips. I can see civil rights volunteers subotaging currency in the safety of their homes, a sort of grassroots thing.
the thousand lira notes in italy used to have a thin silver wire embedded in them. It was really easy to pull those out.
Ahhhh, the sheer elegance of simple set design. These days it would all be several hundred hours of CGI dev time, depending on where you were going
It would be nice if this was in HTML or some similar format instead of Word.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/15/05172
Be kind, everyone is still hunge over from xmas egg nog, etc.
I can hardly wait for IM porn spam
Sounds like a dream come true.
;-)
The translations are identical There are a few minor differances, hard to spot
I understand he was held under lock and key, but he must of had a good lawyer and made bail. Although He'll now be in trouble for fleeing the jurisdiction.
[note to self. patent the idea NOW]
Note of interest is that apparently was the first web cam ever, and it served a pratical purpose for the geeks whom it depended on that cup of coffee.
as seen here:
http://www.worldlingo.com/wl/Translate?wl_lp=DE-EN &wl_fl=2&wl_url=http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/net zkultur/0,1518,174146,00.html&wl_g_table=-3
Although this is German, and you know how that translates to English.
[smile]
Only so long as we do not get the equivalent of the Holy Grail in Outer Space. Although that could be fun in itself.
Also, Futurist Paul Saffo had the idea that "As some people wring their hands about the invasion of privacy and civil liberty, a whole other generation is going to go, 'Cool! I've always wanted to embed technology in my body.' It's going to be fashion. One sure sign that teenagers will love it is if it terrifies their parents.' "
Where as with a simple analog computing model, balancing circuit levels allows the component level to be far less dense and the design far more efficient.This leads us to the conclusion that analog design are far more efficient, But this is natural in specialized machines of any type.
like we really have to ask?
Personally, I wouldn't mind a way to do this sort of thing by shortwave. It would be great for WAN applications between cities [shrug]
I am sure that someone could human engineer the error messages. and since they would actually never go to MS, but maybe to some Bogus Site, like Microsoft-security.com some folks could be fooled by this. I am thinking of the Pay-Pal Scam that was running around a few days back, using simple email. It wouldn't be that hard for people who were expert to fudge something to send a user to La la land, with appropriate dialogs, disclaimers, etc. etc.
if you look at the kind of signals that we're currently using, sort of spread-spectrum signals and things like that, they're very complicated, and they're completely unlike the kind of things we look for in SETI. The kind of things we look for in SETI are signals that are just what are called narrow-band signals, that are on one spot on the radio dial. [...] The advantage of that is that it makes it really easy to find the signal because all the energy is in a small band so it really stands out as a big spike of energy. Whereas if you spread it out over five megahertz, like a TV signal, then the energy's spread all over the band and it's very hard to find. But on the other hand, the actual signals that we use are spread out, more and more. And ET will be at least as advanced as we are, so you might say, "Well, why would they make those narrow-band signals?" And the answer is, probably: most of the time, they don't. [...] (but) there's lots of things that would have narrow-band components in the signal. So that's what we look for
Let's face it, if EM transmission goes the way of the Napoleonic Semaphore system, then we will not have a chance to intercept the new technology.
Nevermind that such an exploit could also be used to do just the same thing and send people off to download a "patch" form a psuedo MS site.
Suddenly people are taking seriously the idea that MS can present a problem for national security, when this was dismissed as a trollish comment before.
The fantasy is the unlikely end result with Bill Gates and buddies being arrested for treason for the software. yes it is just a fantasy. ,p.But isn't Xmas the time of year for dreams? ;)