Every time I have submitted an interesting article to/. about RFID and ways to prevent abuse of it the submission has been rejected. Most recently I submitted an article about technology developed by IBM and Metro Group to disable tags at the point of sale.
Not only have my submissions been rejected (which honestly can't count as evidence since I would guess that 95% of all submissions are rejected unless they are dupes) but/. never posts an article about RFID on the front page that isn't clamoring about the dangers of RFID. Yes there are some posters here that can discuss the issue sensibly, but the articles that hit the front page are all of the, "The sky is falling!" nature.
I am glad to hear that you think I am "off base" for thinking that the/. editors are biased. I would guess that most of the readership fits your definition of "off base".
I should make some "All YOUR base are belong to us!" joke here but I won't.
You could have your contact info encoded onto the tag at the point of sale for high value items if you wanted to. No big brother database needed.
I don't see the danger in having a tag on my Playstation that says it belongs to me. It isn't like the black helicopters flying above my house can read the tag. Of course THEY already know all about me so it doesn't matter anyhow.
Oddly enough the most demonized techonology on/. would solve the problem nicely. If these items each had an RFID tag on them and the RFID tag had owner info written on it at the time of sale then you could track it back to the original owner easily.
Of course RFID tags are manufactured by Satan himself and there is no legitimate use for them, or at least so say the/. editors.
How far down the road do you think it is? There are 8GB CF cards out there, but you have to pay through the nose for them for now. In 18 months what do you think they will cost? 512MB CF cards (and Microdrives for that matter) used to be expensive, now people pick them up without much thought.
4 GB CF cards will be cheap sooner than you think.
I always thought that a 20 or 30 episode mini-series would do the trick. In countries other than the USA there are shows that have a defined end in mind when the show begins. Wouldn't this be refreshing? 24 seemed to be this way during the first season. Hooray for a story arc!
I am not sure what you mean by, "the security issues of this are incredible."
If you mean that this device, as explained in the Wired article, has security vulnerabilities, then I agree.
If you mean that this device would make transactions more secure then I am not sure I agree. I would need to know more about the device. Certainly $200 is a lot to pay for such a device when smart cards with crypto ability cost about $1 for the inexpensive ones.
Lets see.... $200 for a convoluted system that is bulky, requires batteries, and isn't all that secure (and does nothing for online transactions) or $1 for a smart card that is the same size as a credit card, needs no batteries, and is secure for all transactions. Tough call there...
The only advantage I can see this having is as transition technology while the USA catches up to the rest of the world in moving away from mag stripes entirely.
That said, I would love to see their device and learn more about the system.
That is a CGI rendering, same one in the Wired article. There are other images of it on the site that are obviously plastic prototypes that have no electronics in them, but nothing that appears to be a working device with a biometric scanner. If you read their website carefully it appears that they do not actually have a functioning unit with all the features they claim.
Not true. Your magstripe is good for 10 minutes. That is plenty of time to copy it or read it (maybe into another chameleon?) and then return it to you. You figure it is safe because it is "biometric protected" but you are wrong.
The only advantage this seems to have over smart cards is that it doesn't require the replacement of the card acceptance devices. It is more expensive for the consumer, bulkier, and more complicated.
That said I would have loved to have seen a photo of it in the article. What they had was a poorly rendered computer image.
I am not advocating cheating on your taxes, but you think that people are going to go after you for the money that you earned mowing lawns during the summer after high school?
My current employer never asked me if I mowed lawns in high school.
The tech worlds two most controversial gun nuts taking each other on!
SCO could sponsor the duel and put it on pay-per-view. They could rent a boat and do it out at sea since, as I've learned from The Simpsons, "Anything is legal in international waters."
SCO "sells" Linux licenses as part of a lawsuit settlement and includes an NDA so that the "customer" can't publically admit that they are (or are not) a customer.
It smells pretty desperate when you won't let your "best" customers comment on what they've bought from you.
Another aspect of the research that isn't mentioned in the article is that the researcher has a machine that can reliably flip a coin and always achieve the same result. So while your experiment isn't statistically significant, it might not be completely unrelated.
That Tyson Gill's article on ethics and responsibility in programming is extracted from a book he wrote on VB?
Also at the end of the article:
Tyson Gill is the director of information technology at Alitum, Inc., in San Diego, California. He also teaches Visual Basic and Microsoft.Net programming at the University of California, San Diego. He is well known for his influential presentations on design, architecture, planning, and coding. Tyson is the author of Visual Basic 6: Error Coding and Layering
They teach university level VB????? This is considered ethical?
This seems to be the type of device you would want to attach. It might be overkill, but it would do the trick and looks very nice. I would be surprised if there isn't a plastic $5 knockoff out there
In the summer in seattle it's as dry as anywhere I've ever lived (dallas, oklahoma, iowa)
My friend, you don't know dry. Utah, Nevada, Arizona, those are dry places.
As for the snowfall, we're using different measurements. I'm using base depth, you're using the season total, which at Alta and Snowbird is over 600 inches. Plus you are saying that the closest ski are is 20 miles away. I am saying that the closest seven ski areas are less than 20 miles away.
Apples controllers would be all screwy, though, with the buttons on the wrong side of the remote and a plug that doesn't fit into any known port in the universe.
Obviously you are new here./. doctorine is that any Apple controller will only have one button and that/.ers will complain endlessly.
Also you seem unaware that Apple has been a leader in port standardization.
This means that the fact that it is hotter in the summer and colder in the winter isn't a big deal. In Utah it can be below freezing and you'll see people out in a light jacket. Compare that to Boston, where below freezing requires a thick parka plus hat and gloves. It isn't that the people of Utah are used to the cold. It is that the cold doesn't go right through you. The higher altitude helps with this as well.
Same goes for the summer. Low humidity means that when you sweat it actually evaporates which has two nice effects:
1. It cools you down.
2. You don't get all wet and sweaty.
Try that in Seattle when it is hot.
As for lots more snow, that is mostly confined to the mountains. I don't know if you've visited the Salt Lake area before, but it is at about the 4,400 foot level and has 10,000 foot mountains directly to the east. This means that you can have no snow at your house and still be skiing on over 100 inches in less than 20 minutes. It is also nice in the summer since it is cooler in the mountains, sort of like a really long spring.
It does snow occasionally in the valley, and some years it even piles up but as the other poster mentioned, it isn't a big deal. I can only remember three times when they closed school while growing up. The last one it has snowed over two and a half feet. I turned on the TV in the morning hoping to see that school was closed. Oddly, my high school was the only one closed. Why was that? Some idiot had come along at night and broke a bunch of windows so it was cold in the building. Everybody else just went to school in over two feet of snow. No big deal.
In Boston they have gotten two big storms while I've been here, but they've closed the schools many more times than that. Of course the snow is heavier here.
Finally in Utah there is this odd thing that happens summer, spring, winter and fall: Sunshine. Try saying THAT about Seattle.:)
In the interest of fairness I should mention that there are occasionally nasty inversions in the winter. There was a bad one this year.
I would take issue with the better weather, but you do have fun cities and the ocean. I am in Boston currently and I would take the weather of either Utah or Seattle.
Do you like to ski, mountain bike, hike, or camp? Do you enjoy visiting national parks?
If you like any of those things then you might like Utah. If you are not LDS and like those things then even better, because the Mormons aren't doing those things on Sunday. I don't ski on Sunday so I am relying on my friends who do for this info, but they insist that the slopes are nearly empty on Sundays.
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Not only have my submissions been rejected (which honestly can't count as evidence since I would guess that 95% of all submissions are rejected unless they are dupes) but /. never posts an article about RFID on the front page that isn't clamoring about the dangers of RFID. Yes there are some posters here that can discuss the issue sensibly, but the articles that hit the front page are all of the, "The sky is falling!" nature.
I am glad to hear that you think I am "off base" for thinking that the /. editors are biased. I would guess that most of the readership fits your definition of "off base".
I should make some "All YOUR base are belong to us!" joke here but I won't.
I don't see the danger in having a tag on my Playstation that says it belongs to me. It isn't like the black helicopters flying above my house can read the tag. Of course THEY already know all about me so it doesn't matter anyhow.
Of course RFID tags are manufactured by Satan himself and there is no legitimate use for them, or at least so say the /. editors.
4 GB CF cards will be cheap sooner than you think.
How do you know who donated it or why?
You could just as easily said that it was donated by a place that had decided the printer was haunted.
I always thought that a 20 or 30 episode mini-series would do the trick. In countries other than the USA there are shows that have a defined end in mind when the show begins. Wouldn't this be refreshing? 24 seemed to be this way during the first season. Hooray for a story arc!
If you mean that this device, as explained in the Wired article, has security vulnerabilities, then I agree.
If you mean that this device would make transactions more secure then I am not sure I agree. I would need to know more about the device. Certainly $200 is a lot to pay for such a device when smart cards with crypto ability cost about $1 for the inexpensive ones.
Lets see.... $200 for a convoluted system that is bulky, requires batteries, and isn't all that secure (and does nothing for online transactions) or $1 for a smart card that is the same size as a credit card, needs no batteries, and is secure for all transactions. Tough call there...
The only advantage I can see this having is as transition technology while the USA catches up to the rest of the world in moving away from mag stripes entirely.
That said, I would love to see their device and learn more about the system.
That is a CGI rendering, same one in the Wired article. There are other images of it on the site that are obviously plastic prototypes that have no electronics in them, but nothing that appears to be a working device with a biometric scanner. If you read their website carefully it appears that they do not actually have a functioning unit with all the features they claim.
The only advantage this seems to have over smart cards is that it doesn't require the replacement of the card acceptance devices. It is more expensive for the consumer, bulkier, and more complicated.
That said I would have loved to have seen a photo of it in the article. What they had was a poorly rendered computer image.
Where can I get this? Will it be on sale in the states?
My current employer never asked me if I mowed lawns in high school.
So close! Instead they should put them in 2/3rds of the Pepsi bottles that don't have a winning iTunes code.
SCO could sponsor the duel and put it on pay-per-view. They could rent a boat and do it out at sea since, as I've learned from The Simpsons, "Anything is legal in international waters."
It smells pretty desperate when you won't let your "best" customers comment on what they've bought from you.
Another aspect of the research that isn't mentioned in the article is that the researcher has a machine that can reliably flip a coin and always achieve the same result. So while your experiment isn't statistically significant, it might not be completely unrelated.
What you are describing is actually the opposite of what the researchers are claiming since you are flipping the coin over after it lands.
Also at the end of the article:
Tyson Gill is the director of information technology at Alitum, Inc., in San Diego, California. He also teaches Visual Basic and Microsoft.Net programming at the University of California, San Diego. He is well known for his influential presentations on design, architecture, planning, and coding. Tyson is the author of Visual Basic 6: Error Coding and Layering
They teach university level VB????? This is considered ethical?
cool. Now where can I connect to get content?
This seems to be the type of device you would want to attach. It might be overkill, but it would do the trick and looks very nice. I would be surprised if there isn't a plastic $5 knockoff out there
My friend, you don't know dry. Utah, Nevada, Arizona, those are dry places.
As for the snowfall, we're using different measurements. I'm using base depth, you're using the season total, which at Alta and Snowbird is over 600 inches. Plus you are saying that the closest ski are is 20 miles away. I am saying that the closest seven ski areas are less than 20 miles away.
Obviously you are new here.
Also you seem unaware that Apple has been a leader in port standardization.
He claims they are 20% effiecient and that this is a major improvement over conventional turbines which he states have efficiencies around 5%.
This means that the fact that it is hotter in the summer and colder in the winter isn't a big deal. In Utah it can be below freezing and you'll see people out in a light jacket. Compare that to Boston, where below freezing requires a thick parka plus hat and gloves. It isn't that the people of Utah are used to the cold. It is that the cold doesn't go right through you. The higher altitude helps with this as well.
Same goes for the summer. Low humidity means that when you sweat it actually evaporates which has two nice effects:
1. It cools you down.
2. You don't get all wet and sweaty.
Try that in Seattle when it is hot.
As for lots more snow, that is mostly confined to the mountains. I don't know if you've visited the Salt Lake area before, but it is at about the 4,400 foot level and has 10,000 foot mountains directly to the east. This means that you can have no snow at your house and still be skiing on over 100 inches in less than 20 minutes. It is also nice in the summer since it is cooler in the mountains, sort of like a really long spring.
It does snow occasionally in the valley, and some years it even piles up but as the other poster mentioned, it isn't a big deal. I can only remember three times when they closed school while growing up. The last one it has snowed over two and a half feet. I turned on the TV in the morning hoping to see that school was closed. Oddly, my high school was the only one closed. Why was that? Some idiot had come along at night and broke a bunch of windows so it was cold in the building. Everybody else just went to school in over two feet of snow. No big deal.
In Boston they have gotten two big storms while I've been here, but they've closed the schools many more times than that. Of course the snow is heavier here.
Finally in Utah there is this odd thing that happens summer, spring, winter and fall: Sunshine. Try saying THAT about Seattle. :)
In the interest of fairness I should mention that there are occasionally nasty inversions in the winter. There was a bad one this year.
I would take issue with the better weather, but you do have fun cities and the ocean. I am in Boston currently and I would take the weather of either Utah or Seattle.
If you like any of those things then you might like Utah. If you are not LDS and like those things then even better, because the Mormons aren't doing those things on Sunday. I don't ski on Sunday so I am relying on my friends who do for this info, but they insist that the slopes are nearly empty on Sundays.