I know someone who sells computer systems to a public school system (i won't say which one). Recently, he was asked to come up with a proposal for an electronic attendance/security system which could be used quickly as the students walked through the door of the high school. one of the things he has thought about using was facial recognition.
now, there is no doubt in my mind that the way he wants to use it is fine; he's not hiding the camera or anything, there will be a station and the student will walk up to the station, be id'd and move on. my problem w/ it was the potential for abuse, say if the fbi comes in and demands access to the facial recognition records for a student that they are looking for. what I told him was that there was a fundamental difference with this type of identification... unlike an id card, or even a fingerprint, the system can be used to id the student by anyone w/ access to it without the student's consent, whereas w/ a card the student would have to volunteer the card etc.
i would be really interested in the slashdot community's response to a system like this. do you think a system like this is acceptable? if not, why? is it the "hiddeness" of the current security facial recognition that bothers you, or is it something more elemental?
but if i'm right, that stat is ludicrous... because it counts all the popunder ads! page views that you force on people are no way to guage interest in your product!
or do they? from eric raymond's how to be a hacker:
"If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and
call you a hacker, you're a hacker. (emphasis added)
since i'm not a hacker, i'll have to go with mr. raymond's authority. and by his little paper, it would seem (if you read through) that the most important thing in being a hacker is being recognized as such by others. so, maybe you're right... real hackers don't call themselves hackers: others do.
it also reminds me of another DNA... doug adams. In his "Dirk Gently's Detective Agency," one character is obsessed with his idea that all natural phenomena should somehow translate into "beautiful" music. interesting what it turns out in the end the author seems to think comes closest...
here at columbia we had this problem... and also that the intro to cs lectures were becoming just too big to handle. so they split them up, with a class for majors, and "honors level" class, and a class for non majors which is actually called "computer programming" and not computer science. I actually think that last part is backwards... the majors should be taking just an intro to programming so that they can then utilize their skills in learning cs in more classes.
they use java as the introductory language now... which annoys me, simply because i don't feel it is as widely used as some people would like to think it is. c/c++ is still the king when i look at job listings. likewise, the one credit c and c++ language classes are extremely popular...
at this here university, we do 2 things, both of which have been heavily discussed in this thread:
filter email stuff on the server
have a site license for norton av.
this works adequately, especially given our extremely hands-off approach to computing (e.g. our IT dept practically laughed at the riaa when they sent a non-threatening threat to the univ. president about napster).
but why don't we support linux (i'm a tech support guy)? simple. there are just too many variations. some users (i.e. most of the ones who call) require you to tell them step by step where to point and click. how are we to do this when there are a thousand different windowmanagers out there? you may say that these users won't have customized their computers to that extent, but which distribution's standard setup is the one we support? and what about users who have, where do we draw the line? despite what a lot of us would like to believe, its just not simple enough yet, and generally speaking if you're using linux you need to be able to know how to fix it at some basic level. i heard that over at princeton they're trying their hands at supporting just redhat... sounds like a good starting point but we'll see how that works out.
I first read Adams' stuff when I was about 12. Back then I just thought it was funny; only now, as I go through college have I started to realize how truly deep some of it is. If you really want a good insight into hitchhiker's, I highly reccomend the annotated radio scripts (i think they're entitled "the original hitchhiker's radio scripts") if you can find a copy.
I use verizon as my DSL provider, and when you sign up, you choose a "GSP," which is either qwest or some other company I don't remember. I recall at the time being told by someone that it didn't matter which one I chose, so I think I chose qwest. Anyone know what kind of impact this deal will have on someone in my situation?
Slashdot Mirror
I know someone who sells computer systems to a public school system (i won't say which one). Recently, he was asked to come up with a proposal for an electronic attendance/security system which could be used quickly as the students walked through the door of the high school. one of the things he has thought about using was facial recognition.
now, there is no doubt in my mind that the way he wants to use it is fine; he's not hiding the camera or anything, there will be a station and the student will walk up to the station, be id'd and move on. my problem w/ it was the potential for abuse, say if the fbi comes in and demands access to the facial recognition records for a student that they are looking for. what I told him was that there was a fundamental difference with this type of identification... unlike an id card, or even a fingerprint, the system can be used to id the student by anyone w/ access to it without the student's consent, whereas w/ a card the student would have to volunteer the card etc.
i would be really interested in the slashdot community's response to a system like this. do you think a system like this is acceptable? if not, why? is it the "hiddeness" of the current security facial recognition that bothers you, or is it something more elemental?
but if i'm right, that stat is ludicrous... because it counts all the popunder ads! page views that you force on people are no way to guage interest in your product!
it also reminds me of another DNA... doug adams. In his "Dirk Gently's Detective Agency," one character is obsessed with his idea that all natural phenomena should somehow translate into "beautiful" music. interesting what it turns out in the end the author seems to think comes closest...
here at columbia we had this problem... and also that the intro to cs lectures were becoming just too big to handle. so they split them up, with a class for majors, and "honors level" class, and a class for non majors which is actually called "computer programming" and not computer science. I actually think that last part is backwards... the majors should be taking just an intro to programming so that they can then utilize their skills in learning cs in more classes.
they use java as the introductory language now... which annoys me, simply because i don't feel it is as widely used as some people would like to think it is. c/c++ is still the king when i look at job listings. likewise, the one credit c and c++ language classes are extremely popular...
- filter email stuff on the server
- have a site license for norton av.
this works adequately, especially given our extremely hands-off approach to computing (e.g. our IT dept practically laughed at the riaa when they sent a non-threatening threat to the univ. president about napster). but why don't we support linux (i'm a tech support guy)? simple. there are just too many variations. some users (i.e. most of the ones who call) require you to tell them step by step where to point and click. how are we to do this when there are a thousand different windowmanagers out there? you may say that these users won't have customized their computers to that extent, but which distribution's standard setup is the one we support? and what about users who have, where do we draw the line? despite what a lot of us would like to believe, its just not simple enough yet, and generally speaking if you're using linux you need to be able to know how to fix it at some basic level. i heard that over at princeton they're trying their hands at supporting just redhat... sounds like a good starting point but we'll see how that works out.I first read Adams' stuff when I was about 12. Back then I just thought it was funny; only now, as I go through college have I started to realize how truly deep some of it is. If you really want a good insight into hitchhiker's, I highly reccomend the annotated radio scripts (i think they're entitled "the original hitchhiker's radio scripts") if you can find a copy.
I use verizon as my DSL provider, and when you sign up, you choose a "GSP," which is either qwest or some other company I don't remember. I recall at the time being told by someone that it didn't matter which one I chose, so I think I chose qwest. Anyone know what kind of impact this deal will have on someone in my situation?