Huh? Since when? I use it, seems quite simple to me. You generate a keypair at install time, secure your private key with a passphrase, and two buttons get added to your mailclient - one for encryption of the message, other for signing.
When you send a signed email, you're asked for that passphrase, and when you receive an encrypted mail you're asked the same -- automagically. Likewise, a digisig is also confirmed at that time too.
Using the key manager, you can see your public key, submit to a keyserver (like pgp.mit.edu) for others to obtain, as well as add your friend's pubkeys to your keyring. And it's very straightforward to do.
Unicom Systems Development going up against Unicom Systems, Inc. (USI holds the tm on "Unicom")
USI took the time to register their trademark, while USD did not. Since there is no statue of limitation on defense of trademarks, USI has some real beef here. If I register the term "slashdot" as a trademark tomorrow, I can legally sue (successfully too) Slashdot.org for tm violation, even though Slashdot.org was here several years already. It also wouldnt matter if I sued next week, or next century, I'd still win.
There have been plenty of prior cases on this issue -- Ford Motors vs. ford.com comes to mind -- guy with last name Ford registered Ford.com before Ford Motors did. But since Ford Motors had that tm, they were able to obtain ford.com from Mr Ford.
The major difference here is that USD was around long before USI registered their mark, but how that fact will play out is a very interesting question. I know of cases where that's happened, just cant think of any right now.
Point: This case will be very tricky for USD to handle, but to USI it's almost cake.
did you even read the article? or even try to think out what it said? it's not much different than what's already there. The FBI already has the abilities the article talks about, and it still requires court approval before a wiretap can even happen. On top of that, the article states there were only 80 some wiretaps performed in CA during all of 2000. And California's a big state! #3 (maybe 4) in land area, #1 in population. Read first, use your own brain, then comment.
After reading the article (gasp!), Governer Davis wants state and local police to be able to do roving phone taps, something the FBI got in the Patriot Act. He also wants to give state/local police ability to tap email.
But like any other wire tap, all this still requires judge's approval and authroization. Hence, I dont see the big deal. On top of this, the article states that there were only 88 approved warrants for wiretaps in the year 2000 in CA, so it's not like wiretaps are a big thing for state and local police in CA, especially when you consider the size and population of CA.
.. they focus on extreme cases, like people who post thousands of messages across hundreds of message boards, or that guy Intel fired who sent hundreds of emails to Intel's corporate email address book.
While I do think the cases of people getting in trouble for over-posting crosses the line of first amendment, I feel the case of the former Intel employee was justified because he was harassing Intel directly and stealing the services their email systems provided.
The article also focuses on anonymous posting, which I see as a Good Thing (tm) when used correctly (eg - whistle blowing), but is just as easy a bad thing because it opens the door for things like competitors posing as former employees and post damaging stuff about the competition. For example, while this example problably wont happen -- Ford is about to lay off 20,000 people, GM could pose as former Ford employees and forge some nasty stuff about Ford to gain ground on them.
Companies may be reluctant to hire someone at entry-level if they're too old. They generally want someone they hope to retain for a long time, and dont have to start paying retirement benefits within a small number of years. This of course, depends on your uncle's age. While that might be age discrimination, it happens a lot. My g/f's father had that problem a few years ago, but has since found work elsewhere.
Unless your uncle can provide something other than software engineering, he might be SOL. Hopefully his manufacturing work can fill that void. For example, things like robotics in manufacturing. I'm sure he's familiar with how they're used in the manufacturing process. He could find a job working for a robotics developer that sells robots to companies like General Motors or Ford.
FaceIt® will automatically detect human presence, locate and track faces, extract face images, perform identification....
I dont see "The operator will manually control the camera's positioning and focus." Seems to me the ACLU got it wrong in a big way. From what I've seen on TV about this technology, this is how it works in Tampa, and has for years in the UK.
As for firing people over bias, naturally there would be a "corrective action period" where the person is told they're being baised, how they determined that, and to shape up.
was that the same show where someone realized that a camera was able to peer into his bedroom, so he wore an alien suit one night in public to attract attention to it?
What you describe at the former Soviet Embassy would not require a court order. The Embassy is Soviet land, and is not subject to the laws of the United States. Hence, the US didnt need a court order to plant a camera in a copy machine at an Embassy, just the authorization from officals at the CIA. Now if the "repair man" was caught by Soviet officials -- he would be tried for espionage in Moscow.
The court order the FBI had is only needed when dealing within the US, regardless of the investigatee's nationality.
i agree that bias may exist, but that would exist anyhow and there's not much that can be done to prevent other than fire the person if they're caught.
The only way I see bias, however, is much different than yours. To my knowledge, the system in tampa scans/zooms/pans through crowds in whatever fashion it does, then notifies an operator of a possible match. Control of the camera get switched over to the operator so they can have a look for themselves to verify the match and initiate further action if they see fit. Chances are good these operators are going to be minimum wagers, not police officers, so the chance of bias is high (much like modern airport security), whether it be race/sex/whatever.
I guess a solution would be to have multiple operators in multiple locations. When a match comes up, present it to more than one person. Differences of judgement go to a supervisor or something for a decision. While still not perfect, it does introduce some level of checks-and-balance.
Aside from all that, it has been theorized (not yet proven) by psychologists that people have difficulty identifying someone of another race. An example I can think of off the top of my head is an old 20/20 (or maybe Dateline?) story where a white woman was raped by a black man. In a police line up, the woman picked out the suspect. DNA and other evidence set the man free without being charged. Several months later, that DNA evidence (stored in a DB of some sort), was used against someone caught in an another rape case. Turns out that guy was present in the original line up -- the woman picked out the wrong guy. The only similarity the two men had were height and skin color. Faces were not especially similar.
i think it's good that/. has some people here that realize the human element that would verify possible matches made by the system before dragging the person in for questioning.
there are other ways this system may cause ease for people.
it has to be worth the officer's time to go get the guy if it is indeed a match. someone wanted for petty theft would be better off than someone wanted for first degree murder.
it also depends on what else is currently happening on the cop's beat. If there's a hostage situation around the corner, the cop will have to wait another day to catch the guy wanted for murder 1.
i had a rather long and drawn out discussion with someone who just couldnt be conviced of this concept the last time this topic came up. good to see other open minds out there.
the idea of my post was to show that the problem wont go away anytime soon.
I do agree, however, that the photo db is part of the problem. The system probably demands a very high-res pic in order to work properly. Most store/bank security cameras arent high-res enough to be useful for Face-It.
Building the db striaght from a photo db of licensed drivers, visas, etc wont happen, as even politicians are smart enough to realize that putting everybody in that db would create too many false-positives than true-positives.
OTOH, if someone is picked up by police w/o ID with them, that's where something like that would be helpful. But then again, such instances are rare, so justifying the costs of doing so would be difficult.
The US had requested that the Ukraine implement the "optical media licensing regime" that would prevent piracy of things like DVDs. Ukraine didnt comply, so the US levied a tariff on important things like oil, shoes, and paper imported from the Ukraine to put pressure on the Ukraine to implement that "optical media licensing regime"
the equipment needs better testing. thus far they have formally tested 20 people (if you read the article, you'd know), which is far much too small a sample. Plus the fact that something like 8 of them were told to lie intentionally, which isnt easy for a person to do. 6 of those 8 were found to be lying, which is worse than the rate of false positives.
Good testing would involve a very large sample, probably on the order of 1000s, of people who were willing to face an odd question, to which the response remains confidential (or even destroyed). After questioning, the subject gives a card to the proctor telling of whether their answer was truth or a lie, to be compared with the imaging.
Odd questions should be things people are generally uncomfortable with, like "Have you ever visited a porn website?" Think about how you would react to such questioning face to face with someone.
In addition, the person(s) reviewing the tape of the subjects in front of the thermal imager should not have audio or any other clue toward the question/answer being asked/given. They would base their judgement solely on the person's facial temperature. The cards would be used to match the correctness of the reviewer's decision.
Other things like nervousness to enter the equation, which is normal. Someone may have temperature increases even if they're telling the truth. In polygraphs dummy questions like "Is your name _____?" come up to establish a baseline of the subject. Thermal imaging may also require that, which would then defeat the purpose of "rapid examination" for airports and border crossings.
Does this mean MS is commiting corporate espionage and sabotage against Linux and Solaris? Meaning MS is paying someone to work for Sun and quietly cause problems with Solaris code. Same for Linux - have someone inside Red Hat or even as just any ol' OSS guy causing problems to the Linux kernel. Of course, the Linux kernel is under much more watch than Solaris is.
i wouldnt be surprised that they get a submission, say to themselves "wow!" and post it without giving a second thought to it. hey, the first article was 6 weeks ago, maybe timothy still recovering from new year's?
beleive it or not, I made a similar post a few days ago with regard to the WEP security article.
CNN is the Cable News Network - a 24/7 News channel in the US. It's located in Atlanta, GA, eastern standard time, which is 5 hours after GMT time (meaning 12midnight GMT is 7pm EST).
Aside from that, it was midnight in ANY time zone for the best view. You should be able to see it tonight at about the same spot is was last night.
owenPS is the guy who got his submission accepted, 3 days after someone else's submission was rejected. we're bitching about the fact that people take the time to do a write up on an article/topic, get it rejected by/., and then see the article appear on the front page days later. Occasionally that "days later" is weeks, which *really* pisses off the person who sent it in the original.
they get refreshed every few hours. the numbers for submitters are accepted items since/. started keeping track of those numbers the last slashcode upgrade some months ago.
Slashdot Mirror
it simply isn't easy to use
Huh? Since when? I use it, seems quite simple to me. You generate a keypair at install time, secure your private key with a passphrase, and two buttons get added to your mailclient - one for encryption of the message, other for signing.
When you send a signed email, you're asked for that passphrase, and when you receive an encrypted mail you're asked the same -- automagically. Likewise, a digisig is also confirmed at that time too.
Using the key manager, you can see your public key, submit to a keyserver (like pgp.mit.edu) for others to obtain, as well as add your friend's pubkeys to your keyring. And it's very straightforward to do.
Here's how i see it
Unicom Systems Development going up against Unicom Systems, Inc. (USI holds the tm on "Unicom")
USI took the time to register their trademark, while USD did not. Since there is no statue of limitation on defense of trademarks, USI has some real beef here. If I register the term "slashdot" as a trademark tomorrow, I can legally sue (successfully too) Slashdot.org for tm violation, even though Slashdot.org was here several years already. It also wouldnt matter if I sued next week, or next century, I'd still win.
There have been plenty of prior cases on this issue -- Ford Motors vs. ford.com comes to mind -- guy with last name Ford registered Ford.com before Ford Motors did. But since Ford Motors had that tm, they were able to obtain ford.com from Mr Ford.
The major difference here is that USD was around long before USI registered their mark, but how that fact will play out is a very interesting question. I know of cases where that's happened, just cant think of any right now.
Point: This case will be very tricky for USD to handle, but to USI it's almost cake.
did you even read the article? or even try to think out what it said? it's not much different than what's already there. The FBI already has the abilities the article talks about, and it still requires court approval before a wiretap can even happen. On top of that, the article states there were only 80 some wiretaps performed in CA during all of 2000. And California's a big state! #3 (maybe 4) in land area, #1 in population. Read first, use your own brain, then comment.
After reading the article (gasp!), Governer Davis wants state and local police to be able to do roving phone taps, something the FBI got in the Patriot Act. He also wants to give state/local police ability to tap email.
But like any other wire tap, all this still requires judge's approval and authroization. Hence, I dont see the big deal. On top of this, the article states that there were only 88 approved warrants for wiretaps in the year 2000 in CA, so it's not like wiretaps are a big thing for state and local police in CA, especially when you consider the size and population of CA.
.. they focus on extreme cases, like people who post thousands of messages across hundreds of message boards, or that guy Intel fired who sent hundreds of emails to Intel's corporate email address book.
While I do think the cases of people getting in trouble for over-posting crosses the line of first amendment, I feel the case of the former Intel employee was justified because he was harassing Intel directly and stealing the services their email systems provided.
The article also focuses on anonymous posting, which I see as a Good Thing (tm) when used correctly (eg - whistle blowing), but is just as easy a bad thing because it opens the door for things like competitors posing as former employees and post damaging stuff about the competition. For example, while this example problably wont happen -- Ford is about to lay off 20,000 people, GM could pose as former Ford employees and forge some nasty stuff about Ford to gain ground on them.
Companies may be reluctant to hire someone at entry-level if they're too old. They generally want someone they hope to retain for a long time, and dont have to start paying retirement benefits within a small number of years. This of course, depends on your uncle's age. While that might be age discrimination, it happens a lot. My g/f's father had that problem a few years ago, but has since found work elsewhere.
Unless your uncle can provide something other than software engineering, he might be SOL. Hopefully his manufacturing work can fill that void. For example, things like robotics in manufacturing. I'm sure he's familiar with how they're used in the manufacturing process. He could find a job working for a robotics developer that sells robots to companies like General Motors or Ford.
striaght from the company's website:
....
FaceIt® will automatically detect human presence, locate and track faces, extract face images, perform identification
I dont see "The operator will manually control the camera's positioning and focus." Seems to me the ACLU got it wrong in a big way. From what I've seen on TV about this technology, this is how it works in Tampa, and has for years in the UK.
As for firing people over bias, naturally there would be a "corrective action period" where the person is told they're being baised, how they determined that, and to shape up.
was that the same show where someone realized that a camera was able to peer into his bedroom, so he wore an alien suit one night in public to attract attention to it?
slight clarification:
What you describe at the former Soviet Embassy would not require a court order. The Embassy is Soviet land, and is not subject to the laws of the United States. Hence, the US didnt need a court order to plant a camera in a copy machine at an Embassy, just the authorization from officals at the CIA. Now if the "repair man" was caught by Soviet officials -- he would be tried for espionage in Moscow.
The court order the FBI had is only needed when dealing within the US, regardless of the investigatee's nationality.
i agree that bias may exist, but that would exist anyhow and there's not much that can be done to prevent other than fire the person if they're caught.
The only way I see bias, however, is much different than yours. To my knowledge, the system in tampa scans/zooms/pans through crowds in whatever fashion it does, then notifies an operator of a possible match. Control of the camera get switched over to the operator so they can have a look for themselves to verify the match and initiate further action if they see fit. Chances are good these operators are going to be minimum wagers, not police officers, so the chance of bias is high (much like modern airport security), whether it be race/sex/whatever.
I guess a solution would be to have multiple operators in multiple locations. When a match comes up, present it to more than one person. Differences of judgement go to a supervisor or something for a decision. While still not perfect, it does introduce some level of checks-and-balance.
Aside from all that, it has been theorized (not yet proven) by psychologists that people have difficulty identifying someone of another race. An example I can think of off the top of my head is an old 20/20 (or maybe Dateline?) story where a white woman was raped by a black man. In a police line up, the woman picked out the suspect. DNA and other evidence set the man free without being charged. Several months later, that DNA evidence (stored in a DB of some sort), was used against someone caught in an another rape case. Turns out that guy was present in the original line up -- the woman picked out the wrong guy. The only similarity the two men had were height and skin color. Faces were not especially similar.
i think it's good that /. has some people here that realize the human element that would verify possible matches made by the system before dragging the person in for questioning.
there are other ways this system may cause ease for people.
it has to be worth the officer's time to go get the guy if it is indeed a match. someone wanted for petty theft would be better off than someone wanted for first degree murder.
it also depends on what else is currently happening on the cop's beat. If there's a hostage situation around the corner, the cop will have to wait another day to catch the guy wanted for murder 1.
i had a rather long and drawn out discussion with someone who just couldnt be conviced of this concept the last time this topic came up. good to see other open minds out there.
the idea of my post was to show that the problem wont go away anytime soon.
I do agree, however, that the photo db is part of the problem. The system probably demands a very high-res pic in order to work properly. Most store/bank security cameras arent high-res enough to be useful for Face-It.
Building the db striaght from a photo db of licensed drivers, visas, etc wont happen, as even politicians are smart enough to realize that putting everybody in that db would create too many false-positives than true-positives.
OTOH, if someone is picked up by police w/o ID with them, that's where something like that would be helpful. But then again, such instances are rare, so justifying the costs of doing so would be difficult.
He's sinced shaved his goatee, so he no longer looks like that . . . but would this system have been abel to diferentiate?
given what some people said in the MSNBC article, your friend would be fine
glasses, mustache, beards, longer hair, lighting, even turning 15 degrees were enough to foil the system.
... so the police abandoned it after not catching anyone with it.
all this means is the companies developing this stuff will have to improve their face-matching algorithm and then we'll all be back at square one.
given the demand for this stuff a la Sept 11, i dont think the companies will have a problem with motivation
The US had requested that the Ukraine implement the "optical media licensing regime" that would prevent piracy of things like DVDs. Ukraine didnt comply, so the US levied a tariff on important things like oil, shoes, and paper imported from the Ukraine to put pressure on the Ukraine to implement that "optical media licensing regime"
email from john@iz.cx with the following subject
$$ MAKE $$$$$ PROSECUTING SPAMMERS!!! $$
Good testing would involve a very large sample, probably on the order of 1000s, of people who were willing to face an odd question, to which the response remains confidential (or even destroyed). After questioning, the subject gives a card to the proctor telling of whether their answer was truth or a lie, to be compared with the imaging.
Odd questions should be things people are generally uncomfortable with, like "Have you ever visited a porn website?" Think about how you would react to such questioning face to face with someone.
In addition, the person(s) reviewing the tape of the subjects in front of the thermal imager should not have audio or any other clue toward the question/answer being asked/given. They would base their judgement solely on the person's facial temperature. The cards would be used to match the correctness of the reviewer's decision.
Other things like nervousness to enter the equation, which is normal. Someone may have temperature increases even if they're telling the truth. In polygraphs dummy questions like "Is your name _____?" come up to establish a baseline of the subject. Thermal imaging may also require that, which would then defeat the purpose of "rapid examination" for airports and border crossings.
Does this mean MS is commiting corporate espionage and sabotage against Linux and Solaris? Meaning MS is paying someone to work for Sun and quietly cause problems with Solaris code. Same for Linux - have someone inside Red Hat or even as just any ol' OSS guy causing problems to the Linux kernel. Of course, the Linux kernel is under much more watch than Solaris is.
the PS of his email says it all --
if you think I am not tracking this message, think again
makes me wonder about WinXP's calling home.....
i wouldnt be surprised that they get a submission, say to themselves "wow!" and post it without giving a second thought to it. hey, the first article was 6 weeks ago, maybe timothy still recovering from new year's?
beleive it or not, I made a similar post a few days ago with regard to the WEP security article.
old news
CNN is the Cable News Network - a 24/7 News channel in the US. It's located in Atlanta, GA, eastern standard time, which is 5 hours after GMT time (meaning 12midnight GMT is 7pm EST).
Aside from that, it was midnight in ANY time zone for the best view. You should be able to see it tonight at about the same spot is was last night.
owenPS is the guy who got his submission accepted, 3 days after someone else's submission was rejected. we're bitching about the fact that people take the time to do a write up on an article/topic, get it rejected by /., and then see the article appear on the front page days later. Occasionally that "days later" is weeks, which *really* pisses off the person who sent it in the original.
well, that's just another example of article rejection followed by getting posted. seems to be topic of the day in some places
they get refreshed every few hours. the numbers for submitters are accepted items since /. started keeping track of those numbers the last slashcode upgrade some months ago.