A bio-scanner on its own, no matter the type, is an incorrect use of the technology.
No, biometric scanners can provide good authentication on their own, as long as you can ensure that the object being scanned is actually the person, and that it's not possible to tamper with the scanner, data path, matching engine or template store. It's also important to understand the resolution of the scanning system, meaning its ability to distinguish between individuals. If you're using a single biometric for both identification and authentication, you're almost certainly doing it wrong, unless the number of authorized persons is very small, because the birthday problem will quickly erase the resolution. Of course, all of the factors can be calculated, so the system can be designed to provide whatever degree of assurance is necessary - though for high-security applications that may mean that multiple biometrics are required, or that you have to enter a username or something to provide the identification so the biometric is strictly used for authentication.
But it only works if you can assure that what your scanning is the person, and there's no way that can be done in an unattended environment. This is true whether you're using multi-factor or not.
Moderate levels of security can be achieved with an unattended biometric scan as one factor, but it's typically the weakest factor of the system; in fact it's usually so weak that the additional security it provides is debatable.
Biometrics are good for two categories of applications: Super high security, James Bond type stuff, and casual semi-security, where you want something to keep out the lazy but don't care that much. In between, they're broken.
They work great in high-security applications when you have a controlled environment, which generally means an attended environment -- a guard is standing there very carefully watching the scanning process, and the scanners and all of the support systems are tightly secured.
And they're fine in circumstances where you don't care very much.
In between, biometrics are not secrets, and the fact that some scanner reported an image which appears to match means very little.
Then drive the first 50 miles and ride a bike for the last 10. Hopefully it is possible to find a parking lot somewhere in a reasonable distance where you can also stash a bike. Another alternative would be to consider moving closer to work or changing job to something closer to home.
No need to stash the bike at the parking lot, just get a bike rack for the car.
I am. I gave the Mac a shot... two years. But I just can't adapt myself to it, and it won't adapt to me. There are various small problems, but the lack of a usable focus-follows-mouse is huge. Linux is just more comfortable.
Now they can even look at you and still not be looking at you.
Actually, it's very clear when a Glass user is looking at their display vs looking at you. In order to look at the screen they have to look up and to the right. When their eyes are focused on you, they're looking at you. When their eyes are focused somewhere above your left shoulder, they're looking at the screen. (I've had the chance to play with one for a few minutes.)
Then add the aspect that someone looking at you wearing one is "recording" or at least "analyzing" everything seen and heard and sharing it with Google or whomever is quite invasive.
I like the idea of having a continuously-recording camera on my head. I don't want it to save everything because that would just be a huge amount of very boring footage, but I would very much like to be able to speak a command and have it save, say, the last n seconds. I miss most of the things I'd like to record because I don't know I want to record it until after it's happened.
However, I don't think that will be practical for the first few generations. I suspect that battery life will be a major limitation.
The statistics I've seen impacting the success of children is in regards to legally recognized marriages. Parents who stay together without a legally recognized marriage suffer a statistically significant drop in the likelihood of success of their children.
What about people with official, say, church-solemnized marriages which are not recognized by the law?
You're imputing something to legal standing of a marriage which I don't believe has anything to do with legality or government recognition. That the children of couples who have not bothered to make their union in any way formal have a less stable upbringing than those who have formalized their union makes perfect sense, and has nothing to do with government papers.
Your statement is heavily dependent on the assumption that government endorsement of a particular marital arrangement significantly affects whether or not people will choose it. I posit that other social institutions are hugely more important than government in influencing such choices.
Note that I'm very strongly in favor of traditional marriage (by which I mean a man and a woman, who stay married and provide a loving, supportive environment for children); I just don't see why government should be involved. Further, I think government will ultimately be required to formally recognize a wide variety of less stable structures. Which will mean that if your implicit assumption is correct -- and I sincerely hope it's not -- then government involvement will become a destabilizing force.
Much better for government to butt out and leave family structure to institutions better suited to maintain it -- and meanwhile leave people who really want to go their own way the right to do so.
I freaked out when I read about them banning users for not using their real names, even losing all other associated google accounts (AdSense, especially).
Which, of course, never happened. To anyone. As Google said at the time. The only impact of not using your real name was having your Google+ profile removed. It never affected any other Google services.
one cannot open a google account without a valid cellphone numbr for verification
Not true. Google asks for a number, because Google has found that having a second method for identity verification dramatically reduces the number of accounts that get locked out by forgotten passwords, or that are successfully hijacked, but you don't have to provide it.
I did the same about 10 years ago for the same reasons. Oddly enough it was the people at the local LUG with their iBooks & MacBooks that made me realize something was amiss.
I'm typing this on a MacBook Air. I've given it two years, to make sure that I was really certain, but for me the OS X experiment has failed. I'm waiting for a Lenovo Carbon X1 to show up and I'll be back to Linux (I can't install Linux on the Air because it's a company machine and the company policy is that Macs run OS X; they'll swap me for a Lenovo with Ubuntu, though).
I think the best solution is to simply get government out of the business of marriage entirely. Let people make whatever sort of property, child care and permissions-sharing arrangements they like via contracts (perhaps with some "standard", default contracts for those who don't wish to define their own) and let groups (e.g. religions) and individuals define "marriage" however they like.
You want to marry your cat? Go for it, dude. Just don't take any amorous liberties without the cat's consent.
Which is why our system has built-in checks and balances to protect us from the "tyranny of the mob" (I forget which Federalist mentioned that)....
James Madison, #10 and #51.
But the tyranny of the majority that Madison discussed was primarily a rhetorical device used to try to put the anti-Federalists in their place. Madison argued that a strong federal government could prevent tyrannical majorities in states from enacting oppressive laws, but the view was not widely appreciated, and did not make it into the Constitution or the Bill of Rights -- which was not at all about protecting individuals from the majority (with the exception of the takings clause that Madison craftily slipped into the 5th amendment), but rather about protecting the people and the states as communities from an overbearing federal government (which Madison didn't truly believe was a problem; the Bill of Rights was a compromise and a sop to the anti-Federalists).
Of course, the 14th amendment dramatically changed the meaning of the Bill of Rights, and turned the federal government into a watchdog for individual rights. A role which it sometimes performs well and sometimes ignores; mostly it ignores it when it decides to oppress individual rights.
Going a bit off topic, that's the biggest reason I think we'd be better off stripping the federal government of nearly all its domestic policy roles and shifting those burdens to the states, so that when states find it convenient to stomp on liberties in order to achieve some perceived public good, there's a higher body to stomp back. Theoretically the federal courts are supposed to do this, but I think the courts see themselves too much as part of the federal government, and too interested in furthering its goals.
I've given my father-in-law a series of increasingly locked-down configurations, and he still manages to screw them up occasionally. The last time he made his Chrome window larger than the viewable area and slid it so the controls were all off-screen.
I think the next step is a Chromebook; the only problem is that they come on tiny machines and he wants a bigger display. The Pixel would probably work, but it's too expensive. Next time I visit I'm going to look into a good ChromiumOS distro to install on his laptop.
If your house is insulated it doesn't need much, if any heating or cooling.
Only if you live in a mild climate. Where I live you absolutely need significant heating in the winter, and you'll be more comfortable with some cooling in the summer... no matter how well-insulated the house is, because, for example, in the winter it's not uncommon to go weeks with the temperature rarely rising above freezing.
Size doesn't have much to do with it actually, if your house is properly insulated.
This is clearly false, since for a given insulation factor heat transfer is proportional to exterior surface area, and exterior surface area has an obvious (though not simple; layout matters a lot) relationship with square footage of living space.
Also, insulation is not free. Increasing insulation for a given home increases the cost of the home. It may or may not decrease total cost of ownership, depending on the cost of energy. You're assuming that it will lower TCO, which is true to a point, but only to a point. Personally, I've done the math and energy costs would have to rise substantially before adding insulation to my 350 m^2 home would be cost-effective.
The average Japanese or German home uses 1/3rd the energy that a US one does and they are not walking around in the dark or freezing cold or anything like that.
It's worth pointing out that the median German home is 1/2 the size of the median US home, and Japanese homes are even smaller. So it's likely that most of that conservation is achieved not by more efficient heating/cooling/lighting but by having less space to heat, cool or light. Americans could invest in LED lights, more insulation, tankless water heaters, etc., and reduce their energy budgets by a non-trivial amount, but reaching European, much less Asian, levels would require living in smaller homes.
Of course, you can argue that Americans don't need so much space and should downsize their homes, but that's a non-trivial lifestyle downgrade, rather than just a slight alteration of approach as you're suggesting.
Dude, I hate to spoil it for you, but Linux kernel actually HAS been forked and the fork is massively more successful than the original. It is called Android.
Forked? I don't think that's an accurate characterization. Yes, Google modifies the kernel in some ways, but the Android kernel still tracks Linus' kernel.
Slashdot Mirror
A bio-scanner on its own, no matter the type, is an incorrect use of the technology.
No, biometric scanners can provide good authentication on their own, as long as you can ensure that the object being scanned is actually the person, and that it's not possible to tamper with the scanner, data path, matching engine or template store. It's also important to understand the resolution of the scanning system, meaning its ability to distinguish between individuals. If you're using a single biometric for both identification and authentication, you're almost certainly doing it wrong, unless the number of authorized persons is very small, because the birthday problem will quickly erase the resolution. Of course, all of the factors can be calculated, so the system can be designed to provide whatever degree of assurance is necessary - though for high-security applications that may mean that multiple biometrics are required, or that you have to enter a username or something to provide the identification so the biometric is strictly used for authentication.
But it only works if you can assure that what your scanning is the person, and there's no way that can be done in an unattended environment. This is true whether you're using multi-factor or not.
Moderate levels of security can be achieved with an unattended biometric scan as one factor, but it's typically the weakest factor of the system; in fact it's usually so weak that the additional security it provides is debatable.
Biometrics are good for two categories of applications: Super high security, James Bond type stuff, and casual semi-security, where you want something to keep out the lazy but don't care that much. In between, they're broken.
They work great in high-security applications when you have a controlled environment, which generally means an attended environment -- a guard is standing there very carefully watching the scanning process, and the scanners and all of the support systems are tightly secured.
And they're fine in circumstances where you don't care very much.
In between, biometrics are not secrets, and the fact that some scanner reported an image which appears to match means very little.
Then drive the first 50 miles and ride a bike for the last 10. Hopefully it is possible to find a parking lot somewhere in a reasonable distance where you can also stash a bike. Another alternative would be to consider moving closer to work or changing job to something closer to home.
No need to stash the bike at the parking lot, just get a bike rack for the car.
What features were removed?
I'm not going back.
I am. I gave the Mac a shot... two years. But I just can't adapt myself to it, and it won't adapt to me. There are various small problems, but the lack of a usable focus-follows-mouse is huge. Linux is just more comfortable.
Google Glass doesn't work that way. It it's on, it UPLOADS.
Cite?
Given the image, I'd love to see if someone actually managed to reconstruct the thing and see if it actually can fly... ah, wait - someone managed it
With a 10HP engine of the size and weight of engines of that era?
If only more sites would stop including unsecure content on "secure" pages.
Even better, just go HTTPS for everything.
Now they can even look at you and still not be looking at you.
Actually, it's very clear when a Glass user is looking at their display vs looking at you. In order to look at the screen they have to look up and to the right. When their eyes are focused on you, they're looking at you. When their eyes are focused somewhere above your left shoulder, they're looking at the screen. (I've had the chance to play with one for a few minutes.)
Then add the aspect that someone looking at you wearing one is "recording" or at least "analyzing" everything seen and heard and sharing it with Google or whomever is quite invasive.
I like the idea of having a continuously-recording camera on my head. I don't want it to save everything because that would just be a huge amount of very boring footage, but I would very much like to be able to speak a command and have it save, say, the last n seconds. I miss most of the things I'd like to record because I don't know I want to record it until after it's happened.
However, I don't think that will be practical for the first few generations. I suspect that battery life will be a major limitation.
A good "killer" app would be to randomly black out the display for a second or three, particularly when GPS indicates a speed greater than 60 mph
FYI, the glass display doesn't cover a significant -- or particularly important -- portion of your field of view.
The statistics I've seen impacting the success of children is in regards to legally recognized marriages. Parents who stay together without a legally recognized marriage suffer a statistically significant drop in the likelihood of success of their children.
What about people with official, say, church-solemnized marriages which are not recognized by the law?
You're imputing something to legal standing of a marriage which I don't believe has anything to do with legality or government recognition. That the children of couples who have not bothered to make their union in any way formal have a less stable upbringing than those who have formalized their union makes perfect sense, and has nothing to do with government papers.
Your statement is heavily dependent on the assumption that government endorsement of a particular marital arrangement significantly affects whether or not people will choose it. I posit that other social institutions are hugely more important than government in influencing such choices.
Note that I'm very strongly in favor of traditional marriage (by which I mean a man and a woman, who stay married and provide a loving, supportive environment for children); I just don't see why government should be involved. Further, I think government will ultimately be required to formally recognize a wide variety of less stable structures. Which will mean that if your implicit assumption is correct -- and I sincerely hope it's not -- then government involvement will become a destabilizing force.
Much better for government to butt out and leave family structure to institutions better suited to maintain it -- and meanwhile leave people who really want to go their own way the right to do so.
I freaked out when I read about them banning users for not using their real names, even losing all other associated google accounts (AdSense, especially).
Which, of course, never happened. To anyone. As Google said at the time. The only impact of not using your real name was having your Google+ profile removed. It never affected any other Google services.
one cannot open a google account without a valid cellphone numbr for verification
Not true. Google asks for a number, because Google has found that having a second method for identity verification dramatically reduces the number of accounts that get locked out by forgotten passwords, or that are successfully hijacked, but you don't have to provide it.
Don't want to give a number? Don't.
It was a scary color and had a bayonet mount.
And a barrel shroud. You know, the shoulder thing that goes up.
I did the same about 10 years ago for the same reasons. Oddly enough it was the people at the local LUG with their iBooks & MacBooks that made me realize something was amiss.
I'm typing this on a MacBook Air. I've given it two years, to make sure that I was really certain, but for me the OS X experiment has failed. I'm waiting for a Lenovo Carbon X1 to show up and I'll be back to Linux (I can't install Linux on the Air because it's a company machine and the company policy is that Macs run OS X; they'll swap me for a Lenovo with Ubuntu, though).
I think the best solution is to simply get government out of the business of marriage entirely. Let people make whatever sort of property, child care and permissions-sharing arrangements they like via contracts (perhaps with some "standard", default contracts for those who don't wish to define their own) and let groups (e.g. religions) and individuals define "marriage" however they like.
You want to marry your cat? Go for it, dude. Just don't take any amorous liberties without the cat's consent.
Which is why our system has built-in checks and balances to protect us from the "tyranny of the mob" (I forget which Federalist mentioned that)....
James Madison, #10 and #51.
But the tyranny of the majority that Madison discussed was primarily a rhetorical device used to try to put the anti-Federalists in their place. Madison argued that a strong federal government could prevent tyrannical majorities in states from enacting oppressive laws, but the view was not widely appreciated, and did not make it into the Constitution or the Bill of Rights -- which was not at all about protecting individuals from the majority (with the exception of the takings clause that Madison craftily slipped into the 5th amendment), but rather about protecting the people and the states as communities from an overbearing federal government (which Madison didn't truly believe was a problem; the Bill of Rights was a compromise and a sop to the anti-Federalists).
Of course, the 14th amendment dramatically changed the meaning of the Bill of Rights, and turned the federal government into a watchdog for individual rights. A role which it sometimes performs well and sometimes ignores; mostly it ignores it when it decides to oppress individual rights.
Going a bit off topic, that's the biggest reason I think we'd be better off stripping the federal government of nearly all its domestic policy roles and shifting those burdens to the states, so that when states find it convenient to stomp on liberties in order to achieve some perceived public good, there's a higher body to stomp back. Theoretically the federal courts are supposed to do this, but I think the courts see themselves too much as part of the federal government, and too interested in furthering its goals.
The HP Chromebook has a 14" display with the same number of pixels as a the 11" Samsung. Ideal I think for older eyes.
Ah, right, I'd forgotten about HP's entry. Thanks, I'll take a look.
There are houses in the colder parts of the UK and northern Europe like that, even in Norway where they don't see daylight for six months.
Cite?
Even Linux isn't enough for some users.
I've given my father-in-law a series of increasingly locked-down configurations, and he still manages to screw them up occasionally. The last time he made his Chrome window larger than the viewable area and slid it so the controls were all off-screen.
I think the next step is a Chromebook; the only problem is that they come on tiny machines and he wants a bigger display. The Pixel would probably work, but it's too expensive. Next time I visit I'm going to look into a good ChromiumOS distro to install on his laptop.
If your house is insulated it doesn't need much, if any heating or cooling.
Only if you live in a mild climate. Where I live you absolutely need significant heating in the winter, and you'll be more comfortable with some cooling in the summer... no matter how well-insulated the house is, because, for example, in the winter it's not uncommon to go weeks with the temperature rarely rising above freezing.
Size doesn't have much to do with it actually, if your house is properly insulated.
This is clearly false, since for a given insulation factor heat transfer is proportional to exterior surface area, and exterior surface area has an obvious (though not simple; layout matters a lot) relationship with square footage of living space.
Also, insulation is not free. Increasing insulation for a given home increases the cost of the home. It may or may not decrease total cost of ownership, depending on the cost of energy. You're assuming that it will lower TCO, which is true to a point, but only to a point. Personally, I've done the math and energy costs would have to rise substantially before adding insulation to my 350 m^2 home would be cost-effective.
The average Japanese or German home uses 1/3rd the energy that a US one does and they are not walking around in the dark or freezing cold or anything like that.
It's worth pointing out that the median German home is 1/2 the size of the median US home, and Japanese homes are even smaller. So it's likely that most of that conservation is achieved not by more efficient heating/cooling/lighting but by having less space to heat, cool or light. Americans could invest in LED lights, more insulation, tankless water heaters, etc., and reduce their energy budgets by a non-trivial amount, but reaching European, much less Asian, levels would require living in smaller homes.
Of course, you can argue that Americans don't need so much space and should downsize their homes, but that's a non-trivial lifestyle downgrade, rather than just a slight alteration of approach as you're suggesting.
Dude, I hate to spoil it for you, but Linux kernel actually HAS been forked and the fork is massively more successful than the original. It is called Android.
Forked? I don't think that's an accurate characterization. Yes, Google modifies the kernel in some ways, but the Android kernel still tracks Linus' kernel.