This technique has already been used in jury trials, both to convict one gentleman and to clear another man who was charged with a crime he did not commit. The technique is not related to Minority-Report-type pre-crime and from what I've read it actually seems more scientific than the polygraph.
The basic idea behind the technique is there is a certain detectable pattern in the brain when exposed to information that triggers when the information is novel verses if the information is familiar. The basic experimental setup involved being exposed to pictures and other information that the individual is certain not to have been previously exposed to in the case and which he or she could only be aware of if he or she was the one who committed the crime. For example, known details of the crime scene which the accused was not made aware of in the trial could be shown. The technique would then register whether this information was already in the brain or whether it was novel information.
As I said, it does seem much more scientific a process than the polygraph, however, it is still susceptible to faulty experimental setup. For example, if the accused was unknowingly exposed to details of the crime through gossip or rumour that the experimenter was aware the accused already knew, it could result in a false positive. Additionally, the classical danger in many forensic "science" techniques is that they often are not double-blind or truly scientific in many senses and that prosecutors are and frequently do interact with forensic "scientists" to try to influence results. There is also the constant problem of juries rarely being fully qualified to understand these techniques. For example, a forensic scientist may say a fingerprint was a "partial match" and juries will find the fact the technician used the word "match" significant enough to convict, even though such a measure is more of an art than a science.
The P300 technique is definitely a step beyond such crude tools as the polygraph, but until we fix the many, many significant problems of our criminal justice system it may still only be a more accurate tool in a biased and broken toolbox.
P.S. The article stub did not even mention the common name of the technique, which is called Brain Fingerprinting.
I seem to remember that the real problem Flash clones is that documentation is not completely free and if you read it you have to be under strong NDA for the rest of your life. This should also be why Gnash always lags behind. How did he overcome this issue? Or are we waiting for a lawsuit to strike as soon as the plugin becomes usable?
The creator of the project trained a chimpansee to understand code, a literal code-monkey if you will or rather a code-ape to be more accurate. This code-ape then reads the Flash documentation and explains it with sign language to the project creator. Since the code-ape cannot be properly held to an NDA the project continues unencumbered by draconian laws or demonic contracts.
The real, real question is why is it called a paywall when there is no payments involved? Shouldn't it be a emailgate or a registrationroad or identificationalley or something?
Some of it was seriously cheesy, but some of it was amazing ideas (most revolve around extra interactivity possible with a virtual world when you add a camera to the mix). Amazing ideas from Microsoft?! Some other company than Microsoft is likely going to really make something really interesting with this stuff.
Sure, the iPhone 4 reception issues are a bug. However, they are also a bug whose fix is a $7 phone case you were probably going to buy anyway (not from Apple of course). Apple should really just start including those bumpers as part of the phone package itself for free to nix the bad press.
All in all though, the iPhone has more apps, a better camera (according to reviewers), a slimmer form factor and a higher resolution screen than the competition. And the only real competition out there are Droid devices (though as a side-note their advertizing creeps me out, with all the people turning into robots eyeball-first).
Anyway, I'm posting this on an iPhone 4 in a $7 case and my reception is consistently good (though honestly probably slightly worse than my previous cell bought in 1999 or something on Verizon). I also should say though that unlike my old phone actual phone calls is probably like only the 5th most frequent thing I use the phone for after web use, radio, email and ebooks (Stanza app rocks).
My old cell phone could hold 50 text messages MAX. My new phone can post on Slashdot. I have no serious complaints.
Let's do it in reverse and require a degree in rocket science to be elected to Congress. I mean, after you do the math to land a robot on Mars, how hard can balancing a budget really be?
Old Norse:
Ráðumk, ér Loddfáfnir, en ú ráð nemir, -
njóta mundu, ef ú nemr, ér munu góð, ef ú getr -:
rimr orðum senna skal-at-tu ér við verra mann
oft inn betri bilar,
á er inn verri vegr.
Shakespeare Era Translation:
I rede thee, Loddfafnir! | and hear thou my rede,--
Profit thou hast if thou hearest,
Great thy gain if thou learnest:
With a worse man speak not | three words in dispute,
Ill fares the better oft
When the worse man wields a sword.
20th Century Translation:
Even three words of quarrelling you shouldn't have with an inferior.
[Coal] Power plant cost to top $1 billion
Alliant seeks OK for power plant The cost to build a new coal-fired power plant in Cassville or Portage has soared because of higher construction prices, Alliant Energy Corp. said Friday. The 300-megawatt power plant, which would generate enough power to supply 150,000 homes, is now projected to cost $1.1 billion if it is built in southwestern Wisconsin and $1.2 billion if it is built in Portage, the utility said.
1.45 billion for a renewable, pollution-free energy source or $1.2 billion for billowing black clouds. It's really a no-brainer. A coal power plant costs nearly the same amount. Also, keep in mind the more we build solar power plants, like with anything, the cheaper and more efficient they will get.
The problem seems to be the law itself, namely outlawing possession of destructive devices.
Practically anything can be interpreted to be a destructive device from a common lighter to a nuclear bomb. Hundreds of our laws are like this, being able to be twisted through interpretation to outlaw anything an authority feels like outlawing at a given moment. In practice this results in a state where anything could be illegal, especially anything that doesn't fit in or is different in any way, and encourages blind and unthinking submission to authority.
Even if 99% of all comments are garbage, that is simply an argument for better filtering, not that the crowd has no wisdom. The whole point of the wisdom of the crowd in the first place was to apply filtering mechanisms to ensure the best gets to the top. It seems to work well for Wikipedia and it even will work for this comment if you mod me +1.
This is kind of like saying "I flip a coin. What is the chance it lands heads facing up?"
And you say "50%."
And I say, "Incorrect. There is a very small chance it will land balanced perfectly on it's side, so both the chance of heads and the chance of tails is under 50%."
An individual voluntarily requests a smart identity card from her home state. The individual chooses to use the card to authenticate herself for a variety of online services, including:
Credit card purchases,
Online banking,
Accessing electronic health care records,
Securely accessing her personal laptop computer,
Anonymously posting blog entries, and
Logging onto Internet email services using a pseudonym."
I always want to use a self-identifying card when anonymously posting blog entries. Seems like this also could be easily abused by a government who conducts warrantless wiretaps and other illicit snooping.
"Imagine a world where individuals can seamlessly access information and services online from a variety of sources - the government, the private sector, other individuals, and even across national borders - with reduced fear of identity theft or fraud, lower probability of losing access to critical services and data, and without the need to manage many accounts and passwords."
Honestly, this doesn't seem like a good idea from a security standpoint either. Let's say I wanted to commit fraud or identity theft or any of the other things this card is supposed to prevent. Now, originally, I would have to compromise your 30 passwords. If I hacked your blog, I wouldn't be able to access your bank account because they have different passwords. Now, if a blackhat hacker hacks this universal access method they get universal access. Scary.
Where are the bleeding hearts for this asshole's victims and their families?
The bleeding hearts have realized that the sentence the man receives does not in any way undo or mitigate the deaths of the victims and doesn't do much for their families. It just adds 1 more to the body count.
It's worse than that. If you've ever seen the judicial system in action it bears little resemblance to it's idealized form as perceived by the public and on television. Now, murder cases often get better treatment in general than most, because of their seriousness, but if you've ever been on a jury in an underprivileged area you'll be quick to realize that perception is all that matters. Logic doesn't matter. Truth doesn't matter. Perception is what matters.
The legal system convicts plenty of people of crimes they did not commit. And, consequently, the legal system kills many people crimes for they did not commit. For those that did commit their crimes, it does very little that will change their behavior and it actually and strangely does some things that encourage a repeat of the same behavior that caused friction with society in the first place. It is superficial and does not examen what caused the conflict between a particular person and society. It stigmatizes, yet it does not understand. It is not, in the broad sense, scientific. It is a relic of traditions and shares many features with religion. Our justice system's punitive model is inherently flawed and a net detriment to society, but like a religious dogma, we as a nation do not question it, improve it. It remains what it was largely unchanged since the founding of this nation.
Thus, we have a public official inured to a system of punishment and discipline treating the message death of another as if it were a message about what he had for lunch. What should our justice system be if not formost punitive? That answer is easy:
Aside from the fact that the Army had no reason whatever to believe that the "unarmed civilians" featured in "Collateral Murder" were "unarmed", and the fact that he skipped out on a planned appearance at a panel today in Las Vegas, NV...
Isn't it supposed to go the other way around? You shoot at people who you know are armed and actively dangerous. You often don't have perfect information in war and going on unfounded hunches and "innocent" assumptions can cost innocent lives.
In free and democratic societies, an individual deciding on his or her own to leak classified information is a subversion of that very democratic process. In the US, we have collectively decided, as a society, that some information should be kept secret, even from The People, and we have empowered and entrusted the government with the power to do so.
When an individual, on his or her own, decides that some secret information should be leaked -- no matter the reason -- they subvert that process. It is nowhere near akin to leaking sensitive information from totalitarian or repressive regimes, or even from corporate entities.
Some might assert that information is overclassified, or classified such as to hide wrongdoing or illegal or questionably behavior. Fine, but:
1. You don't get to make that determination yourself. However...
Correct, the people who may have "classified it such as to hide [possible] wrongdoing or illegal or questionably [sic] behavior" make that determination. You are simply saying that is how it is, but is is not ought. Is that how it ought to be?
2....if you do, this kind of decision is a moral/ethical one which must necessarily be tempered with consequences. I.e., if, in a free and democratic society, you really believe that a piece of classified information should be released, and you're going to unilaterally decide to do release it because of your own personal beliefs or convictions, you should be willing to pay your society's consequences for it.
People leak to WikiLeaks because they believe (mostly accurately) that there will be no consequences (unless they stupidly out themselves, as Manning did). This creates an unhealthy environment for any kind of legitimately protected or sensitive information -- indeed, the rule of law -- in a democratic society.
Your own personal view on whether something should or shouldn't be classified is irrelevant. There are well-known and established processes that govern classification.
Just about the only thing WikiLeaks believes should be protected from leaking is negative information about WikiLeaks itself.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
I hope for intelligent responses to this post that actually acknowledge the need for some information to be protected, and for processes to protect that information, of which the government is the steward. Or, for any reasonable alternative other than any and all information should always be able to be indiscriminately leaked without fear of reprisal.
Clearly our nuclear launch codes should not be leaked. However, revealing truth about human rights abuses ultimately leads to our being a healthier nation. Imagine if the abuses at Abu Garib were classified and still continued to this day without the public knowing any better. Sure, revealing those abuses hurt our propaganda efforts in the Middle East somewhat, but I don't think an America that routinely abuses human rights is one worth living in or dying for.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? [Latin for: "Who watches the watchers?" or "Who polices the police?"]. Whistleblowers do. Watchdog journalists do. We the people in order to perfect a union do.
I still think we should decrease our per-capita energy usage and invent new ways to increase its production.
Dr. Wenka Gumi
Okay, so Cached vs Cached
on
Safari 5 Released
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Possibly, but here is an even better comparison with two cached pages. When you click "back" in Safari it loads the page layout and text first and then loads the images. Chrome loads the entire page at once, which is a lot less visually jarring. You can also notice this in the scrollbar which in Safari will keep changing sizes and in Chrome will stay the same same size upon hitting "back."
Additionally, activity monitor consistently shows Safari takes up more virtual memory and percentage usage of the CPU than Safari does. Don't get me wrong, they are both great, speedy browsers and I'm not exactly anti-Apple, being that I'm on a Macintosh, but Chrome 5 really is fast.
Safari Speed & Chrome Speed
on
Safari 5 Released
·
· Score: 0, Troll
I just installed it and went to a website. I then opened Chrome, went to the same website, clicked and additional link and went back to the main page all in the time it took Safari to load up it's one page. That said, it does seem a little faster than Safari 4.
Slashdot Mirror
"that the experimenter was aware the accused already knew" should be "that the experimenter was unaware the accused already knew"
This technique has already been used in jury trials, both to convict one gentleman and to clear another man who was charged with a crime he did not commit. The technique is not related to Minority-Report-type pre-crime and from what I've read it actually seems more scientific than the polygraph.
The basic idea behind the technique is there is a certain detectable pattern in the brain when exposed to information that triggers when the information is novel verses if the information is familiar. The basic experimental setup involved being exposed to pictures and other information that the individual is certain not to have been previously exposed to in the case and which he or she could only be aware of if he or she was the one who committed the crime. For example, known details of the crime scene which the accused was not made aware of in the trial could be shown. The technique would then register whether this information was already in the brain or whether it was novel information.
As I said, it does seem much more scientific a process than the polygraph, however, it is still susceptible to faulty experimental setup. For example, if the accused was unknowingly exposed to details of the crime through gossip or rumour that the experimenter was aware the accused already knew, it could result in a false positive. Additionally, the classical danger in many forensic "science" techniques is that they often are not double-blind or truly scientific in many senses and that prosecutors are and frequently do interact with forensic "scientists" to try to influence results. There is also the constant problem of juries rarely being fully qualified to understand these techniques. For example, a forensic scientist may say a fingerprint was a "partial match" and juries will find the fact the technician used the word "match" significant enough to convict, even though such a measure is more of an art than a science.
The P300 technique is definitely a step beyond such crude tools as the polygraph, but until we fix the many, many significant problems of our criminal justice system it may still only be a more accurate tool in a biased and broken toolbox.
P.S. The article stub did not even mention the common name of the technique, which is called Brain Fingerprinting.
I seem to remember that the real problem Flash clones is that documentation is not completely free and if you read it you have to be under strong NDA for the rest of your life. This should also be why Gnash always lags behind. How did he overcome this issue? Or are we waiting for a lawsuit to strike as soon as the plugin becomes usable?
The creator of the project trained a chimpansee to understand code, a literal code-monkey if you will or rather a code-ape to be more accurate. This code-ape then reads the Flash documentation and explains it with sign language to the project creator. Since the code-ape cannot be properly held to an NDA the project continues unencumbered by draconian laws or demonic contracts.
The real, real question is why is it called a paywall when there is no payments involved? Shouldn't it be a emailgate or a registrationroad or identificationalley or something?
Some of it was seriously cheesy, but some of it was amazing ideas (most revolve around extra interactivity possible with a virtual world when you add a camera to the mix). Amazing ideas from Microsoft?! Some other company than Microsoft is likely going to really make something really interesting with this stuff.
a slimmer form factor
is that before or after the $7 phone case?
Both. The case is a thin layer of flexible rubberlike, plasticlike material that adds grip and prevents scratches on the sides and back.
Sure, the iPhone 4 reception issues are a bug. However, they are also a bug whose fix is a $7 phone case you were probably going to buy anyway (not from Apple of course). Apple should really just start including those bumpers as part of the phone package itself for free to nix the bad press.
All in all though, the iPhone has more apps, a better camera (according to reviewers), a slimmer form factor and a higher resolution screen than the competition. And the only real competition out there are Droid devices (though as a side-note their advertizing creeps me out, with all the people turning into robots eyeball-first).
Anyway, I'm posting this on an iPhone 4 in a $7 case and my reception is consistently good (though honestly probably slightly worse than my previous cell bought in 1999 or something on Verizon). I also should say though that unlike my old phone actual phone calls is probably like only the 5th most frequent thing I use the phone for after web use, radio, email and ebooks (Stanza app rocks).
My old cell phone could hold 50 text messages MAX. My new phone can post on Slashdot. I have no serious complaints.
Let's do it in reverse and require a degree in rocket science to be elected to Congress. I mean, after you do the math to land a robot on Mars, how hard can balancing a budget really be?
when was the last time you wrote code that lasted more than two centuries with less than 30 patches?
Six thousand years ago.
I still think making Woman a decedent of the Rib Class was something of a hack.
The Norse countries
Norse? What is this, the 12th century?
Old Norse:
Ráðumk, ér Loddfáfnir, en ú ráð nemir, -
njóta mundu, ef ú nemr, ér munu góð, ef ú getr -:
rimr orðum senna skal-at-tu ér við verra mann
oft inn betri bilar,
á er inn verri vegr.
Shakespeare Era Translation:
I rede thee, Loddfafnir! | and hear thou my rede,--
Profit thou hast if thou hearest,
Great thy gain if thou learnest:
With a worse man speak not | three words in dispute,
Ill fares the better oft
When the worse man wields a sword.
20th Century Translation:
Even three words of quarrelling you shouldn't have with an inferior.
21st Century Translation:
Don't feed trolls.
Some things never change.
[Coal] Power plant cost to top $1 billion Alliant seeks OK for power plant The cost to build a new coal-fired power plant in Cassville or Portage has soared because of higher construction prices, Alliant Energy Corp. said Friday. The 300-megawatt power plant, which would generate enough power to supply 150,000 homes, is now projected to cost $1.1 billion if it is built in southwestern Wisconsin and $1.2 billion if it is built in Portage, the utility said.
1.45 billion for a renewable, pollution-free energy source or $1.2 billion for billowing black clouds. It's really a no-brainer. A coal power plant costs nearly the same amount. Also, keep in mind the more we build solar power plants, like with anything, the cheaper and more efficient they will get.
Can we really afford not to build them?
Always good to see uneducated crazies are all over the world. I was worried that it was just the USA. Phew! /sarcasm
The specific version of crazy you speak of is hexakosioihexekontahexaphobic.
The number of the beast is actually 616. God, as any diligent sysadmin would be, is clearly concerned by the group execute privileges granted by chmod 616.
The problem seems to be the law itself, namely outlawing possession of destructive devices.
Practically anything can be interpreted to be a destructive device from a common lighter to a nuclear bomb. Hundreds of our laws are like this, being able to be twisted through interpretation to outlaw anything an authority feels like outlawing at a given moment. In practice this results in a state where anything could be illegal, especially anything that doesn't fit in or is different in any way, and encourages blind and unthinking submission to authority.
While you were being snarky, you put a period outside of a quote. Now you just look like a dumb-ass.
Okay, so then I re-flip and a freak meteor falls out of the sky and vaporizes the coin before it hits the ground. It also vaporized you.
Even if 99% of all comments are garbage, that is simply an argument for better filtering, not that the crowd has no wisdom. The whole point of the wisdom of the crowd in the first place was to apply filtering mechanisms to ensure the best gets to the top. It seems to work well for Wikipedia and it even will work for this comment if you mod me +1.
This is kind of like saying "I flip a coin. What is the chance it lands heads facing up?"
And you say "50%."
And I say, "Incorrect. There is a very small chance it will land balanced perfectly on it's side, so both the chance of heads and the chance of tails is under 50%."
Nice work! I read the article and it agrees with your math. 13/27 is exactly what the author concludes.
From the Document Itself:
"Envision It!
An individual voluntarily requests a smart identity card from
her home state. The individual chooses to use the card to
authenticate herself for a variety of online services, including:
Credit card purchases,
Online banking,
Accessing electronic health care records,
Securely accessing her personal laptop computer,
Anonymously posting blog entries, and
Logging onto Internet email services using a
pseudonym."
I always want to use a self-identifying card when anonymously posting blog entries. Seems like this also could be easily abused by a government who conducts warrantless wiretaps and other illicit snooping.
"Imagine a world where individuals can seamlessly access information and services online from a variety of sources - the government, the private sector, other individuals, and even across national borders - with reduced fear of identity theft or fraud, lower probability of losing access to critical services and data, and without the need to manage many accounts and passwords."
Honestly, this doesn't seem like a good idea from a security standpoint either. Let's say I wanted to commit fraud or identity theft or any of the other things this card is supposed to prevent. Now, originally, I would have to compromise your 30 passwords. If I hacked your blog, I wouldn't be able to access your bank account because they have different passwords. Now, if a blackhat hacker hacks this universal access method they get universal access. Scary.
Where are the bleeding hearts for this asshole's victims and their families?
The bleeding hearts have realized that the sentence the man receives does not in any way undo or mitigate the deaths of the victims and doesn't do much for their families. It just adds 1 more to the body count.
It's worse than that. If you've ever seen the judicial system in action it bears little resemblance to it's idealized form as perceived by the public and on television. Now, murder cases often get better treatment in general than most, because of their seriousness, but if you've ever been on a jury in an underprivileged area you'll be quick to realize that perception is all that matters. Logic doesn't matter. Truth doesn't matter. Perception is what matters.
The legal system convicts plenty of people of crimes they did not commit. And, consequently, the legal system kills many people crimes for they did not commit. For those that did commit their crimes, it does very little that will change their behavior and it actually and strangely does some things that encourage a repeat of the same behavior that caused friction with society in the first place. It is superficial and does not examen what caused the conflict between a particular person and society. It stigmatizes, yet it does not understand. It is not, in the broad sense, scientific. It is a relic of traditions and shares many features with religion. Our justice system's punitive model is inherently flawed and a net detriment to society, but like a religious dogma, we as a nation do not question it, improve it. It remains what it was largely unchanged since the founding of this nation.
Thus, we have a public official inured to a system of punishment and discipline treating the message death of another as if it were a message about what he had for lunch. What should our justice system be if not formost punitive? That answer is easy:
Our justice system should be transformative.
Aside from the fact that the Army had no reason whatever to believe that the "unarmed civilians" featured in "Collateral Murder" were "unarmed", and the fact that he skipped out on a planned appearance at a panel today in Las Vegas, NV...
Isn't it supposed to go the other way around? You shoot at people who you know are armed and actively dangerous. You often don't have perfect information in war and going on unfounded hunches and "innocent" assumptions can cost innocent lives.
In free and democratic societies, an individual deciding on his or her own to leak classified information is a subversion of that very democratic process. In the US, we have collectively decided, as a society, that some information should be kept secret, even from The People, and we have empowered and entrusted the government with the power to do so. When an individual, on his or her own, decides that some secret information should be leaked -- no matter the reason -- they subvert that process. It is nowhere near akin to leaking sensitive information from totalitarian or repressive regimes, or even from corporate entities. Some might assert that information is overclassified, or classified such as to hide wrongdoing or illegal or questionably behavior. Fine, but: 1. You don't get to make that determination yourself. However...
Correct, the people who may have "classified it such as to hide [possible] wrongdoing or illegal or questionably [sic] behavior" make that determination. You are simply saying that is how it is, but is is not ought. Is that how it ought to be?
2. ...if you do, this kind of decision is a moral/ethical one which must necessarily be tempered with consequences. I.e., if, in a free and democratic society, you really believe that a piece of classified information should be released, and you're going to unilaterally decide to do release it because of your own personal beliefs or convictions, you should be willing to pay your society's consequences for it.
People leak to WikiLeaks because they believe (mostly accurately) that there will be no consequences (unless they stupidly out themselves, as Manning did). This creates an unhealthy environment for any kind of legitimately protected or sensitive information -- indeed, the rule of law -- in a democratic society.
Your own personal view on whether something should or shouldn't be classified is irrelevant. There are well-known and established processes that govern classification.
Just about the only thing WikiLeaks believes should be protected from leaking is negative information about WikiLeaks itself.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
I hope for intelligent responses to this post that actually acknowledge the need for some information to be protected, and for processes to protect that information, of which the government is the steward. Or, for any reasonable alternative other than any and all information should always be able to be indiscriminately leaked without fear of reprisal.
Clearly our nuclear launch codes should not be leaked. However, revealing truth about human rights abuses ultimately leads to our being a healthier nation. Imagine if the abuses at Abu Garib were classified and still continued to this day without the public knowing any better. Sure, revealing those abuses hurt our propaganda efforts in the Middle East somewhat, but I don't think an America that routinely abuses human rights is one worth living in or dying for.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? [Latin for: "Who watches the watchers?" or "Who polices the police?"]. Whistleblowers do. Watchdog journalists do. We the people in order to perfect a union do.
I still think we should decrease our per-capita energy usage and invent new ways to increase its production.
Dr. Wenka Gumi
Possibly, but here is an even better comparison with two cached pages. When you click "back" in Safari it loads the page layout and text first and then loads the images. Chrome loads the entire page at once, which is a lot less visually jarring. You can also notice this in the scrollbar which in Safari will keep changing sizes and in Chrome will stay the same same size upon hitting "back."
Additionally, activity monitor consistently shows Safari takes up more virtual memory and percentage usage of the CPU than Safari does. Don't get me wrong, they are both great, speedy browsers and I'm not exactly anti-Apple, being that I'm on a Macintosh, but Chrome 5 really is fast.
I just installed it and went to a website. I then opened Chrome, went to the same website, clicked and additional link and went back to the main page all in the time it took Safari to load up it's one page. That said, it does seem a little faster than Safari 4.