While it's true that there's that "off" switch that's always available, the nature of the beast is always tempting you to leave it on. I have a number of friends who get ecstatic when their phone dies or gets lost because of the rush of freedom they feel, but they would never purposefully leave it behind or turn it off.
The internet can be sort of like drugs. Every addict thinks he can quit whenever he wants to, but the truth is... he can't. Everyone thinks they could just turn off the TV or computer and have more alone time... but they don't.
I study at University of California, Santa Barbara and the university recently installed the no-flush kind in all the men's bathrooms in the University Center. The result has been that the men's room smells much cleaner around the clock, even during high-use times. Our urinals are produced by Falcon Waterfree Technologies.
From their website:
- First, they are touch-free so there is little chance of bacteria transfer possible with manual flush systems.
- Second, since there is no water used there is no breeding ground for bacteria. In several studies, bacteria counts in restrooms with Falcon urinals were significantly lower than those with manual or auto-flush urinals.
Falcon urinals create more pleasant restrooms because they eliminate the ammonia odor caused when urine reacts with water to cause ammonia oxide. No water means no reaction.
Anyway, I'd be excited to see them installed in more places.
At a risk of repeating what has already been said several times, here is a simplified version of this "encryption" thing going on:
Say your card reader wants to verify the card:
Reader: "Card, identify yourself." Card: "Name: John Smith. Today's code: 2xfG&k29#5" Reader (to bank): "John Smith gave me code 2xfG&k29#5". Correct?" Bank: "Yes. Proceed with transaction."
Meanwhile Angry Bob intercepts the code with his scanner and sends a message to the bank from his terminal: "John Smith gave me code 2xfG&k29#5. Correct?" Bank: "No. the code you gave is not valid." The code was only valid for that particular instance. (perhaps the bank provided a "seed" value that the card combined with a hash of the account number to verify itself, of course stripping out enough information that the account number can never be reconstructed from the verification code.
The point many posters have made is that the smart card never actually passes along any sensitive information. It passes along some encrypted code that tells the bank whether or not the card is legit. That code will be useless outside the context of that specific transaction. In other words, you can intercept and decrypt all the codes you want but they will not help you.
Also available is the Raging search engine - basically the Altavista search engine with no ad banners or text ads. I've been using this search engine for a few months now, especially when I need to find a specific phrase (ie. "Sleep is pain's easiest salve").
---
hiadam
Slashdot Mirror
While it's true that there's that "off" switch that's always available, the nature of the beast is always tempting you to leave it on. I have a number of friends who get ecstatic when their phone dies or gets lost because of the rush of freedom they feel, but they would never purposefully leave it behind or turn it off.
... he can't. Everyone thinks they could just turn off the TV or computer and have more alone time ... but they don't.
The internet can be sort of like drugs. Every addict thinks he can quit whenever he wants to, but the truth is
I study at University of California, Santa Barbara and the university recently installed the no-flush kind in all the men's bathrooms in the University Center. The result has been that the men's room smells much cleaner around the clock, even during high-use times. Our urinals are produced by Falcon Waterfree Technologies.
From their website:
- First, they are touch-free so there is little chance of bacteria transfer possible with manual flush systems.
- Second, since there is no water used there is no breeding ground for bacteria. In several studies, bacteria counts in restrooms with Falcon urinals were significantly lower than those with manual or auto-flush urinals.
Falcon urinals create more pleasant restrooms because they eliminate the ammonia odor caused when urine reacts with water to cause ammonia oxide. No water means no reaction.
Anyway, I'd be excited to see them installed in more places.
At a risk of repeating what has already been said several times, here is a simplified version of this "encryption" thing going on:
Say your card reader wants to verify the card:
Reader: "Card, identify yourself."
Card: "Name: John Smith. Today's code: 2xfG&k29#5"
Reader (to bank): "John Smith gave me code 2xfG&k29#5". Correct?"
Bank: "Yes. Proceed with transaction."
Meanwhile Angry Bob intercepts the code with his scanner and sends a message to the bank from his terminal: "John Smith gave me code 2xfG&k29#5. Correct?"
Bank: "No. the code you gave is not valid." The code was only valid for that particular instance. (perhaps the bank provided a "seed" value that the card combined with a hash of the account number to verify itself, of course stripping out enough information that the account number can never be reconstructed from the verification code.
The point many posters have made is that the smart card never actually passes along any sensitive information. It passes along some encrypted code that tells the bank whether or not the card is legit. That code will be useless outside the context of that specific transaction. In other words, you can intercept and decrypt all the codes you want but they will not help you.
Also available is the Raging search engine - basically the Altavista search engine with no ad banners or text ads.
I've been using this search engine for a few months now, especially when I need to find a specific phrase (ie. "Sleep is pain's easiest salve"). --- hiadam