Programs like CSI are a mild source of amusement to me. These films run a partial fingerprint through an apparently flawless database and hey presto, a match that stands up in court. Fantastic. Also total nonsense.
Especially a partial will throw up a whole LIST of possible matches, not one unique one. Even if you have two full fingers you get more than one, and that is a simple function of the resolution with which these biometrics are measured against the volume of data that is being matched - you WILL get duplicates.
To illustrate: use hair color as a biometric. If your database has more than 5 people you're sure to end up with duplicates - there are only so many different colours.
Here we are again heading for disaster. Apart from the fact that we'll again end up with a database that is just BEGGING to be abused by all and sundry (I'm starting to suspect that these days that abuse is actually a goal rather than an issue worth avoiding) we well again end up with lots of false positives. Face geometry isn't exactly perfect, as people using Farcebook must have already found out (yes, Facebook does a biometric scan on *every* picture you upload - not just the ones you tag), yet again it's sold as *the* solution. Even more astonishing is that they find buyers who still believe that (well, OK, maybe after a certain amount of "encouragement").
The reason it works for the Israelis is simple: people have a much better ability to combine various sense mechanisms when properly trained. Trained people and dogs are in my opinion a *LOT* harder to fool than any machine, however expensive. What's more - it's actually cheaper.
But hey - it was never about security anyway, was it?
The problem with comparing the two industries is that they really only "meet" on the privacy issue, but nowhere else.
To produce music you CAN do it in a garage and tidy it up in a studio later, and artist revenue also comes from touring. To produce a film you need a lot of extra facilities that quite simply cost money, and your actors may promote, they will not go on tour and sell acting tickets.
The RIAA is about to get a massive kick up its rear end when the plans I have seen a few days ago are anything to go by, and, frankly, I think they deserve it because of the way they treat their customers. However, I don't see such clear things work for the MPAA members because the whole business model is different - there is a LOT of money required upfront, and the performing actors are not always part of the creative process.
I see more differences than parallels. I cannot see the movie industry change on the production end as has happened in the music industry apart from going digital and in some cases 3D.
The distribution end, OTOH, is changing dramatically. The revolution most missed was that Avatar also finally forced cinemas to go digital - no more films, just electronics. When you watch especially 3D you are in principle watching a seriously large LightPro with a fat hard disk and some hardcore DRM. As the process is thus digital from the start, quality goes up and distribution costs go down as long as the Internet stays the free zone it is. If those dropping costs are passed on to the consumer (not from where I'm sitting, but bear with me), "professional" piracy will disappear as it no longer creates a profit. Although, you'd have to resort to a pirated DVD if you want to buy DVDs when you travel because of region codes - not the brightest idea they ever had..
Yes, the control issue is relevant, but to me, the only real lever is price. The rest creates barriers that actually harm sales rather than stimulate them. I can see the need for staggered releases, but is piracy harming that? I don't think so, at least not from my perspective.
If I had mod points I'd mod you up. You're absolutely right. The unsexy stuff is what creates the substance to a business - and you need to be in one office to get it going.
Having said that, if you have good comms you can often give people the option to work from home - office hours don't always work and the traditional commute eats time as well - but that takes people that can indeed *WORK* from home. In my experience they are rather exception than rule. It's much easier to switch to "work" mode with an established routine and a place of work.
On the other hand - with good comms you can clean up a bad work-life balance, and get to see a bit more of your kids. It depends a bit on what you do as a business.
I'm certainly more impressed by Google's willingness to let me export my data.
I hope you are aware of the fact that they can still hang on to your data, even if you leave? See their Terms of Service, chapter 11. Yes, it really says "perpetual".
Just so you go into this with your eyes open - few read this stuff.
I think it's very intelligent. To BUY that sort of marketing costs a fortune - they get it for free. Ir remind me of something that Johanna Blakly said at TED: those who buy copies are probably not customers anyway. Clever use of the alternative market IMHO.
I must admit I'm a bit surprised. I know of several countries where it is mandatory for bills to contain enough information to check that they are accurate, so obfuscation and adding charges together under one header (for example "expenses"). can be challenged in court.
A company asking to take to court before they detail their bills is hiding something - this needs a MUCH deeper look.
You have to stay calm. Nothing worries these people more than someone whose skin they can NOT get under.. I should actually go to the US, just to make orgasmic noises during extreme patdown (I sure as hell won't go through the scanner, plenty of reports from proper radiologists who doubt the alleged "safety" of them).
OTOH, I don't want to go through all the work of checksumming a laptop to be sure they don't infect it. Maybe not, then. Plenty of other 3rd world countries to visit:-).
No, they don't prove that at all. What they do prove is that we are social animals, and are capable of good things with good leadership. Morally defunct leadership gives you a mess. See Bush/Blair..
I don't think you should just single out the Germans and the Japanese there. Attitudes ALWAYS flow downwards, that's how leaders lacking any kind of moral fiber can create so much damage.
Bush, Blair, Enron, Lehman Brothers, Murdoch: in both politics and business, leaders shape the kind of attitudes you get and thus wether you're heading for a society or for a mess.
"Dood", you haven't got the faintest clue who I am, what I know and what I do for a living, and I'm not going to enlighten you. Suffice to say you appear to be using the wrong orifice for communication.
You can pick up chatter with intercept, but the bad guys vary their method of transmission which means you'd need to grab everything. Too much hay to find fewer needles, and *if* you find needles you may discover it's old school OTP, which means you can't convert unless their messages are a bit longer - you need the code book.. The problem with the grab-it-all approach is that you get a lot more data to discard than with a targeted approach.
However, you cannot develop targets without on-the-ground intel, but that's the stuff that's been abandoned. When done properly, HUMINT gets the ball rolling, with SIGINT providing the further surveillance provided it is legally permissible (and here I'd love to advocate transparency - some people DO actually make an effort to do it right).
But we've generally walked away from HUMINT and now have to face the music for it. Especially IT security has become staggeringly predictable, and is thus easy to defeat.
It's only common sense if it wasn't pretending that the fundamentals were sound. They are not.
Card security was designed with "card present" in mind. The moment people started using card numbers over a phone the whole model went bust. The only difference now is that thieves can steal from further away. No amount of VISA 3D can bury the problem, it's merely papering over the cracks.
Either the monkey took the picture in which case the takedown notice was in bad faith and legally actionable, or the photographer took the picture and the newspaper lied - in which case we have deception with intend to issue a bad faith takedown notice.
Either way is going to be rather interesting - the latter more damaging, though, given that the picture has done the rounds.
Personally, I see option 2 as more likely as the picture was IMHO too perfect for a random event.
Time to get some beer and popcorn, this one will be fun to watch..
The military has a certain structure to make sure VERY large scale things remain coordinated - thus the associated bureaucracy. Sure, it'll take decades for the Defense Equipment and Support to clean up the mess in procurement, but let's assume for a moment they could and hit a more commercial frame of mind and speed.
They would still lose the battle.
The problem is in the way security is now managed. For the last 5 years, everyone has settled down into a fine routine of process, patching and playthings: the same kit (with more bells under the guise of "upgrades" to borrow several chapters from the MS book on how to milk customers) , formalised processes using standards and patching ad infinitum - I am positive that apart from EDLIN.exe and the background graphics, all other WinXP code in C:/WINDOWS has been replaced at least 10 times by now, judging by the size of downloads over the life of an installation.
We are losing the battle.
The reason goes back to something that especially the military ought to know: we have become predictable. Unless we change that, we have a problem that will only get worse.
Integration of payment facilities is what tends to break "my own POS" solutions. As soon as you touch a regular payment system you'll hit the circus surrounding PCI compliance, and that's a headache in itself.
There is something new on its way, but as first talks have only started this month I don't expect anything exciting to happen for at least another 3 months. It's probably going to be 2012 before this comes out proper..
If the people started wearing extremely light weight clothing - almost see through, that would help with evaporation from the skin. This is especially important for women.
I think you ought to get your pr0n from the Net like everyone else. Nice try, though 8-)
On a more serious note, the clothing thing confuses me somewhat. The people that spend all their time in the sweltering desert seem to wear quite a few layers, no idea how they manage that. The thought alone makes me sweat..
Voicemail was only ever invented to boost call revenue, so security wasnt a major issue. You will probably walk straight into the voice box if you spoof called ID, which is easily done with your average VoIP setup..
The simplicity of this system also gets in the way of decent forensics, so the police can only prove access through call records. I suspect it's not that easy to secure a conviction.
But that's not the whole story. When this scandal broke, the then government was scared to upset the press, so they didn't press for the measures that would make such an offensive attract a jail sentence. Guess who is now making all the noise now the government has changed? Yup, the same hypocrites.
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Programs like CSI are a mild source of amusement to me. These films run a partial fingerprint through an apparently flawless database and hey presto, a match that stands up in court. Fantastic. Also total nonsense.
Especially a partial will throw up a whole LIST of possible matches, not one unique one. Even if you have two full fingers you get more than one, and that is a simple function of the resolution with which these biometrics are measured against the volume of data that is being matched - you WILL get duplicates.
To illustrate: use hair color as a biometric. If your database has more than 5 people you're sure to end up with duplicates - there are only so many different colours.
Here we are again heading for disaster. Apart from the fact that we'll again end up with a database that is just BEGGING to be abused by all and sundry (I'm starting to suspect that these days that abuse is actually a goal rather than an issue worth avoiding) we well again end up with lots of false positives. Face geometry isn't exactly perfect, as people using Farcebook must have already found out (yes, Facebook does a biometric scan on *every* picture you upload - not just the ones you tag), yet again it's sold as *the* solution. Even more astonishing is that they find buyers who still believe that (well, OK, maybe after a certain amount of "encouragement").
The reason it works for the Israelis is simple: people have a much better ability to combine various sense mechanisms when properly trained. Trained people and dogs are in my opinion a *LOT* harder to fool than any machine, however expensive. What's more - it's actually cheaper.
But hey - it was never about security anyway, was it?
It's just another ploy to sell some useless kit..
The problem with comparing the two industries is that they really only "meet" on the privacy issue, but nowhere else.
To produce music you CAN do it in a garage and tidy it up in a studio later, and artist revenue also comes from touring. To produce a film you need a lot of extra facilities that quite simply cost money, and your actors may promote, they will not go on tour and sell acting tickets.
The RIAA is about to get a massive kick up its rear end when the plans I have seen a few days ago are anything to go by, and, frankly, I think they deserve it because of the way they treat their customers. However, I don't see such clear things work for the MPAA members because the whole business model is different - there is a LOT of money required upfront, and the performing actors are not always part of the creative process.
I see more differences than parallels. I cannot see the movie industry change on the production end as has happened in the music industry apart from going digital and in some cases 3D.
The distribution end, OTOH, is changing dramatically. The revolution most missed was that Avatar also finally forced cinemas to go digital - no more films, just electronics. When you watch especially 3D you are in principle watching a seriously large LightPro with a fat hard disk and some hardcore DRM. As the process is thus digital from the start, quality goes up and distribution costs go down as long as the Internet stays the free zone it is. If those dropping costs are passed on to the consumer (not from where I'm sitting, but bear with me), "professional" piracy will disappear as it no longer creates a profit. Although, you'd have to resort to a pirated DVD if you want to buy DVDs when you travel because of region codes - not the brightest idea they ever had..
Yes, the control issue is relevant, but to me, the only real lever is price. The rest creates barriers that actually harm sales rather than stimulate them. I can see the need for staggered releases, but is piracy harming that? I don't think so, at least not from my perspective.
If I had mod points I'd mod you up. You're absolutely right. The unsexy stuff is what creates the substance to a business - and you need to be in one office to get it going.
Having said that, if you have good comms you can often give people the option to work from home - office hours don't always work and the traditional commute eats time as well - but that takes people that can indeed *WORK* from home. In my experience they are rather exception than rule. It's much easier to switch to "work" mode with an established routine and a place of work.
On the other hand - with good comms you can clean up a bad work-life balance, and get to see a bit more of your kids. It depends a bit on what you do as a business.
If I follow this through, budget airlines passengers would face all-out rape - and terrorists would fly 1st class..
I'm certainly more impressed by Google's willingness to let me export my data.
I hope you are aware of the fact that they can still hang on to your data, even if you leave? See their Terms of Service, chapter 11. Yes, it really says "perpetual".
Just so you go into this with your eyes open - few read this stuff.
That.. is brutally awesome. Can I hire you the next time I need some total bullshit?
It beats 7 types of crap out of the Internet BS generators. Wow.
I'm in absolute awe - I just hope you don't speak like that in daily life :-)
.. to just avoid, at every conceivable cost and in any way possible, the term Open Standards.
It hurts, doesn't it? I mean, having to work with others?
I think it's very intelligent. To BUY that sort of marketing costs a fortune - they get it for free. Ir remind me of something that Johanna Blakly said at TED: those who buy copies are probably not customers anyway. Clever use of the alternative market IMHO.
My compliments. It doesn't just lay down the problem properly, it also links to a YouTube video that would make any lesser brand manager nervous.
Hats off to the copyright holders here: VERY smart move. I'm to old to say "Respek" but I'll do it anyway - I love remixes :-).
You've got the HD cameras. Now get yourself educated :-)
(for those who don't get it, google "Lie to me").
I must admit I'm a bit surprised. I know of several countries where it is mandatory for bills to contain enough information to check that they are accurate, so obfuscation and adding charges together under one header (for example "expenses"). can be challenged in court.
A company asking to take to court before they detail their bills is hiding something - this needs a MUCH deeper look.
You have to stay calm. Nothing worries these people more than someone whose skin they can NOT get under.. I should actually go to the US, just to make orgasmic noises during extreme patdown (I sure as hell won't go through the scanner, plenty of reports from proper radiologists who doubt the alleged "safety" of them).
OTOH, I don't want to go through all the work of checksumming a laptop to be sure they don't infect it. Maybe not, then. Plenty of other 3rd world countries to visit :-).
No, they don't prove that at all. What they do prove is that we are social animals, and are capable of good things with good leadership. Morally defunct leadership gives you a mess. See Bush/Blair..
I don't think you should just single out the Germans and the Japanese there. Attitudes ALWAYS flow downwards, that's how leaders lacking any kind of moral fiber can create so much damage.
Bush, Blair, Enron, Lehman Brothers, Murdoch: in both politics and business, leaders shape the kind of attitudes you get and thus wether you're heading for a society or for a mess.
Never worked for me, I've got green eyes :-).
"Dood", you haven't got the faintest clue who I am, what I know and what I do for a living, and I'm not going to enlighten you. Suffice to say you appear to be using the wrong orifice for communication.
You can pick up chatter with intercept, but the bad guys vary their method of transmission which means you'd need to grab everything. Too much hay to find fewer needles, and *if* you find needles you may discover it's old school OTP, which means you can't convert unless their messages are a bit longer - you need the code book.. The problem with the grab-it-all approach is that you get a lot more data to discard than with a targeted approach.
However, you cannot develop targets without on-the-ground intel, but that's the stuff that's been abandoned. When done properly, HUMINT gets the ball rolling, with SIGINT providing the further surveillance provided it is legally permissible (and here I'd love to advocate transparency - some people DO actually make an effort to do it right).
But we've generally walked away from HUMINT and now have to face the music for it. Especially IT security has become staggeringly predictable, and is thus easy to defeat.
You might want to read the article then - that was an initial theory but turned out not to be true..
It's only common sense if it wasn't pretending that the fundamentals were sound. They are not.
Card security was designed with "card present" in mind. The moment people started using card numbers over a phone the whole model went bust. The only difference now is that thieves can steal from further away. No amount of VISA 3D can bury the problem, it's merely papering over the cracks.
Either the monkey took the picture in which case the takedown notice was in bad faith and legally actionable, or the photographer took the picture and the newspaper lied - in which case we have deception with intend to issue a bad faith takedown notice.
Either way is going to be rather interesting - the latter more damaging, though, given that the picture has done the rounds.
Personally, I see option 2 as more likely as the picture was IMHO too perfect for a random event.
Time to get some beer and popcorn, this one will be fun to watch..
The military has a certain structure to make sure VERY large scale things remain coordinated - thus the associated bureaucracy. Sure, it'll take decades for the Defense Equipment and Support to clean up the mess in procurement, but let's assume for a moment they could and hit a more commercial frame of mind and speed.
They would still lose the battle.
The problem is in the way security is now managed. For the last 5 years, everyone has settled down into a fine routine of process, patching and playthings: the same kit (with more bells under the guise of "upgrades" to borrow several chapters from the MS book on how to milk customers) , formalised processes using standards and patching ad infinitum - I am positive that apart from EDLIN.exe and the background graphics, all other WinXP code in C:/WINDOWS has been replaced at least 10 times by now, judging by the size of downloads over the life of an installation.
We are losing the battle.
The reason goes back to something that especially the military ought to know: we have become predictable. Unless we change that, we have a problem that will only get worse.
Integration of payment facilities is what tends to break "my own POS" solutions. As soon as you touch a regular payment system you'll hit the circus surrounding PCI compliance, and that's a headache in itself.
There is something new on its way, but as first talks have only started this month I don't expect anything exciting to happen for at least another 3 months. It's probably going to be 2012 before this comes out proper..
Good luck!
If the people started wearing extremely light weight clothing - almost see through, that would help with evaporation from the skin. This is especially important for women.
I think you ought to get your pr0n from the Net like everyone else. Nice try, though 8-)
On a more serious note, the clothing thing confuses me somewhat. The people that spend all their time in the sweltering desert seem to wear quite a few layers, no idea how they manage that. The thought alone makes me sweat..
Voicemail was only ever invented to boost call revenue, so security wasnt a major issue. You will probably walk straight into the voice box if you spoof called ID, which is easily done with your average VoIP setup..
The simplicity of this system also gets in the way of decent forensics, so the police can only prove access through call records. I suspect it's not that easy to secure a conviction.
But that's not the whole story. When this scandal broke, the then government was scared to upset the press, so they didn't press for the measures that would make such an offensive attract a jail sentence. Guess who is now making all the noise now the government has changed? Yup, the same hypocrites.
This situation reminds me of the buttered toast & cats approach to anti-gravity.. :-)
As far as I can see, privacy seems to interfere with their business model as well..