Not good enough for the reasons you noted. The machine needs to actually understand its relationship to you. It's knowledge of you can be based on many things, but they need to be intrinsic properties that are unique to you. Again, just like I said before, the machine needs to know you in the same way that your family and friends know you.
I see Wikipedia as a very similar endeavor to a public library (I happen to work for one), or PBS. Both of those older style sources can present erroneous information at times, but this is the hazard you run into when trying to collect a large body of information. It doesn't mean that this source is any less credible than another. Ss soon as better information comes to the fore, these types of sources usually correct the information AND provide a history in their collection of what was previously held to be correct. The concept revolves around the idea that if given new information that may be more correct, it is possible to change your previously held viewpoint. This is a lesson that George W. Bush needs to learn. Now, on the other hand, if you're the kind of moron who can't adjust your views based on new information, then why don't you grab a copy of the 1956 Britannica Yearbook? Their music reviewer at the time said that the cacophony that was "rock and roll" was merely a passing fad created by people with a love of primitive, tribal rhythms. He was certain that sanity would return and pop culture would be saved by the eventual death of rock and roll. Thankfully, his successor was a little more open minded and realized that rock and roll wasn't a passing fad. If I can teach anyone anything here on Slashdot I want to pass this along to you. There is no such thing as an "expert" or an "authority". There are only people who hae differing levels of knowledge and ability to understnad that knowledge. Wikipedia does not claim to be authoritative. It only claims to share information that is in flux and they try to be as accurate as possible in that kind of state. They are being rather realistic actually.
Oh boy. Why is it that the typical Slashbot automatically latches onto the word "zealot" when they are trying to disparage the people they oppose? I wioll say that I use Wikipedia quite often and find it to be a great resource. However, I don't believe that it completely replaces other publications (encyclopedias or otherwise). It's just a really great starting point if you are curious about something. Where you go with it after that is completely up to you. But there seems to be this group of people who hate the idea of information being freely exchanged. Yes, there are errors in the information but this is much less frequent than those who oppose Wikipedia would have people believe. And even with the occasional error or editing war, the basic information allows you to make an informed decision on whether or not you actually have an interest in what you are reading about. If you decide that you do, then you can pursue that subject further either online or at your local public library. If Wikipedia gets you that far, then it's done its job.
However, I'm not talking about biometrics. I'm talking about a self contained system that has consiousness (or at least our approximation of it since we may not even know what consiousness is). This is a machine that actually knows what it can do and understands why someone would want to utilize it's resources for bad or for good. Based on that knowledge, it's access lists and an undestanding of who it's dealing with, (not based on any kind of contemporary biometric scans) then it would authenticate securely. It knows who you are because it understands its relationship to you and it bases it's relationship on long term interaction and memories of you. It might use facial recognition, but that would only be a minor part of the scheme. Humans recognize based on more esoteric knowledge than just looking at a face. Otherwise they'd be fooled by a photograph or video.
True, but their access lists aren't fully developed and their security mechanisms are very limited (crying for example). A baby might be able to determine that a stranger is not a parent, but there is little else it can do to protect itself due to the undeveloped access list. A baby doesn't know not to let a stranger do something they shouldn't. As far as being self-aware, I don't think a child reaches that point until it has a well developed access list. Otherwise the access list is pointless.
The usability problem occurs during authorization. People don't like to remember complex passwords, so they pick something easy to remember (and figure out) or they write it down on a picec of paper. Or if you use a token authentication system like RSA tokens (with the random number for logging in) then you have added a level of complexity that most users are confounded by. We get calls where I work on a frequent basis because the users can't deal with the tokens. With SSH and static keys, you have the option of using a passphrase. But many people opt for a blank passphrase so there is nothing to type. Here is the ideal:
1. You touch a computer, it knows who you are by some mystical means and grants you access. 2. You don't need to remember anything. No passwords, no voice print, no finger print, no retinal scan, nothing. It just knows who you are. 3. Once it's determined who you are, then it knows what you are allowed to do.
What is needed is an authentication mechanism that works in the same way that we "authenticate" our friends and family to interact with us. If you see your wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend or child, you have a predfined "access list" that allows them access to your resources. The authentication is that you know your relationship to them. A girlfriend or boyfriend may allow sexual contact with their partner that they wouldn't allow to their child or parent. Pretty basic, but that's what most people (deep down) want from their machines. (No. Not the sex you idiot, the access to a resource) Until machines can actually recognize us (which probably won't happen until they know themselves), I think we're going to have this usability/security problem.
There are any number of things that make that hard, but considering the unemployment in this country I would say #1 is the financial impact it would have. Many people can't just up and walk out on a job that sucks if they have bills to pay. EA is abusing it's employees plain and simple. And they have the employee right where they want them because they know that person needs to pay the bills.
Another factor is that when you work twelve hours a day, seven days a week, it becomes nearly impossible to do a job search, update your resume, or do interviews. Without that ability, leaving one job for another one that treats you better and pays just as well is unattainable. If you want to work twelve hours days every day of the week and get paid the very minimum that EA is willing to offer for that kind of back breaking sacrifice you're more than welcome to pick up and move and apply for a job. Until you do that, you can shut the hell up motherfucker. Said with the best of intentions of course.;P
Dammit, I hate HTML. There is no structure like C, Perl or Bash in HTML, so I always leave out tags and then end up with an entire paragraph bolded. Oh yeah... I also hate previewing my posts too.;P
You make a good point which I think gets lost in the shuffle sometimes:
Making money isn't automatically evil.
However, you need to add this to the end of that to be complete:...as long as how you make money has no negative impact on anyone including your competition.
That is the only ethical way to do business. But it's something that is not practiced because the system is built upon trying to smash or take advantage of competitors. In this case, the Open/Free projects that are being abused here ARE essentially competitors and the Ekush people are doing something detrimental to the Open/Free projects. This company is no better than the companies that snag Wikipedia entries and put up their own ad ridden "Free Encyclopaedias" without giving credit where credit is due.
There used to be an ad for some kind of MSN TV device that could (gasp!) record two shows at once. Whatever hapened to that. It was called something like "MSN New TV" or something like that.
...Microsoft trying to make money from licenses than it has to do with trying to make it harder for the average person to be a content producer and distributor vs. just being a consumer. It's still a bad thing, but do not let them convince you that licensing profits are at stake. Something bigger is at stake: your role as a consumer of services.
Damn! And I just had mod points yesterday. The parent certainly deserves a +5 Insightful. While, I don't hold anyone's particular belief system in contempt, I do think it's unproductive to try and shoehorn the world into your particular way of thinking. The bible is a nice book with some guidelines for living. Some of those guidelines are good, others are WAY OFF BASE. It's not so much a history but more of a text based version of the telephone game. Use your heads people. This is about science and completely exclusive of religion. These guys didn't say , "god doesn't exist". They said, "Oh look! There is a similariy between rods and cones and the light sensitive brain cells of lower creatures".
First you make me say "wiki". Then you make me say "Business Week" and all that comes out is "Business Wiki". Maybe you're right. Maybe we are headed for a Wiki world...;P
Re:Americans talk about freedom
on
Press freedom
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· Score: 1
For the time being they are allowed to do so. (The last vestiges of what the U.S. used to be) With "four more years" it just might not be possible to do that unless you are a white evangelical with visions of hellfire and brimstone who votes conservatively. In my state we've got a "redefine marriage" issue on the ballot to say that marriage is only between a man and a woman. Many other states have similar issues on their ballots. Still think this is going to be a free country for long with people trying hard to take others rights from them?
Re:Survey is biased. France better than USA?
on
Press freedom
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· Score: 1
Nice Troll.;P Now if only Fox actually carried news...
...this is ever going to change. Someone will need to create a new protocol for sending mail that will provide the anti-spam features, but more importantly will provide some new, very desirable feature(s) that people will desperately want. This is the only way to get lazy asses to move to a new protocol. The problem lies in who that someone turns out to be. If Microsoft comes up with some whiz-bang new protocol for sending mail that does what I mentioned above, then all the folks who are Microsoft shops will move in that direction and the openess of the internet will have dissipated that much more. If Sun, or Novell do it (assuming they could manage to get an original idea out of their R&D at all.;P ) the adoption of this new protocol would be slow. If the IETF come up with something, then we'll get the usual people joining in later in this order: *nix vendors first, ISPs with proprietary setups next, and finally Microsoft after their initial attempts at mimicking the IETF but in a backwards way fail. It happened with HTTP that way...
So the real question isn't, "how do we stop spam by getting rid of SMTP" but it's, "what can a new protocol do that will up the ante in functionality so that everyone and his brother just HAS to have it"? Personally, I have a completely different solution that I've been using with friends and family using freely available open source tools. Think about your phone numbers (work, home, cell) and you'll get the idea... (Come on folks! I can't feed you everything;P )
Incandescant lamps have been deprecated for over a decade - they're wasteful and short lived, if cheap.
fluorescent lamps have been deprecated for over four years - they're wasteful and short lived, if cheaper.
When I moved into my place, 4 years ago, I decided to never buy another fluorescent lamp again. Over the next 2 years I replaced every lamp, as it blew, with an appropriate high-efficiency white LED array. I will have to replace the first of those in 2017.
Net saving is around 50 or 60 quid a year in electric and 100 or so per decade in lampage. 'Nuff said.;P
(I kid, I kid... because I love)
Is this the start of a new mememememe...
on
A Truly Alive Virus
·
· Score: 1
Slashdot Mirror
Not good enough for the reasons you noted. The machine needs to actually understand its relationship to you. It's knowledge of you can be based on many things, but they need to be intrinsic properties that are unique to you. Again, just like I said before, the machine needs to know you in the same way that your family and friends know you.
I see Wikipedia as a very similar endeavor to a public library (I happen to work for one), or PBS. Both of those older style sources can present erroneous information at times, but this is the hazard you run into when trying to collect a large body of information. It doesn't mean that this source is any less credible than another. Ss soon as better information comes to the fore, these types of sources usually correct the information AND provide a history in their collection of what was previously held to be correct. The concept revolves around the idea that if given new information that may be more correct, it is possible to change your previously held viewpoint. This is a lesson that George W. Bush needs to learn. Now, on the other hand, if you're the kind of moron who can't adjust your views based on new information, then why don't you grab a copy of the 1956 Britannica Yearbook? Their music reviewer at the time said that the cacophony that was "rock and roll" was merely a passing fad created by people with a love of primitive, tribal rhythms. He was certain that sanity would return and pop culture would be saved by the eventual death of rock and roll. Thankfully, his successor was a little more open minded and realized that rock and roll wasn't a passing fad. If I can teach anyone anything here on Slashdot I want to pass this along to you. There is no such thing as an "expert" or an "authority". There are only people who hae differing levels of knowledge and ability to understnad that knowledge. Wikipedia does not claim to be authoritative. It only claims to share information that is in flux and they try to be as accurate as possible in that kind of state. They are being rather realistic actually.
Oh boy. Why is it that the typical Slashbot automatically latches onto the word "zealot" when they are trying to disparage the people they oppose? I wioll say that I use Wikipedia quite often and find it to be a great resource. However, I don't believe that it completely replaces other publications (encyclopedias or otherwise). It's just a really great starting point if you are curious about something. Where you go with it after that is completely up to you. But there seems to be this group of people who hate the idea of information being freely exchanged. Yes, there are errors in the information but this is much less frequent than those who oppose Wikipedia would have people believe. And even with the occasional error or editing war, the basic information allows you to make an informed decision on whether or not you actually have an interest in what you are reading about. If you decide that you do, then you can pursue that subject further either online or at your local public library. If Wikipedia gets you that far, then it's done its job.
However, I'm not talking about biometrics. I'm talking about a self contained system that has consiousness (or at least our approximation of it since we may not even know what consiousness is). This is a machine that actually knows what it can do and understands why someone would want to utilize it's resources for bad or for good. Based on that knowledge, it's access lists and an undestanding of who it's dealing with, (not based on any kind of contemporary biometric scans) then it would authenticate securely. It knows who you are because it understands its relationship to you and it bases it's relationship on long term interaction and memories of you. It might use facial recognition, but that would only be a minor part of the scheme. Humans recognize based on more esoteric knowledge than just looking at a face. Otherwise they'd be fooled by a photograph or video.
True, but their access lists aren't fully developed and their security mechanisms are very limited (crying for example). A baby might be able to determine that a stranger is not a parent, but there is little else it can do to protect itself due to the undeveloped access list. A baby doesn't know not to let a stranger do something they shouldn't. As far as being self-aware, I don't think a child reaches that point until it has a well developed access list. Otherwise the access list is pointless.
You're funny. ;P Still an idiot, but funny. At least you've got a good attitude and you made me laugh. ;P
The usability problem occurs during authorization. People don't like to remember complex passwords, so they pick something easy to remember (and figure out) or they write it down on a picec of paper. Or if you use a token authentication system like RSA tokens (with the random number for logging in) then you have added a level of complexity that most users are confounded by. We get calls where I work on a frequent basis because the users can't deal with the tokens. With SSH and static keys, you have the option of using a passphrase. But many people opt for a blank passphrase so there is nothing to type. Here is the ideal:
1. You touch a computer, it knows who you are by some mystical means and grants you access.
2. You don't need to remember anything. No passwords, no voice print, no finger print, no retinal scan, nothing. It just knows who you are.
3. Once it's determined who you are, then it knows what you are allowed to do.
What is needed is an authentication mechanism that works in the same way that we "authenticate" our friends and family to interact with us. If you see your wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend or child, you have a predfined "access list" that allows them access to your resources. The authentication is that you know your relationship to them. A girlfriend or boyfriend may allow sexual contact with their partner that they wouldn't allow to their child or parent. Pretty basic, but that's what most people (deep down) want from their machines. (No. Not the sex you idiot, the access to a resource) Until machines can actually recognize us (which probably won't happen until they know themselves), I think we're going to have this usability/security problem.
There are any number of things that make that hard, but considering the unemployment in this country I would say #1 is the financial impact it would have. Many people can't just up and walk out on a job that sucks if they have bills to pay. EA is abusing it's employees plain and simple. And they have the employee right where they want them because they know that person needs to pay the bills.
;P
Another factor is that when you work twelve hours a day, seven days a week, it becomes nearly impossible to do a job search, update your resume, or do interviews. Without that ability, leaving one job for another one that treats you better and pays just as well is unattainable. If you want to work twelve hours days every day of the week and get paid the very minimum that EA is willing to offer for that kind of back breaking sacrifice you're more than welcome to pick up and move and apply for a job. Until you do that, you can shut the hell up motherfucker. Said with the best of intentions of course.
Dammit, I hate HTML. There is no structure like C, Perl or Bash in HTML, so I always leave out tags and then end up with an entire paragraph bolded. Oh yeah... I also hate previewing my posts too. ;P
Making money isn't automatically evil.
However, you need to add this to the end of that to be complete: ...as long as how you make money has no negative impact on anyone including your competition.
That is the only ethical way to do business. But it's something that is not practiced because the system is built upon trying to smash or take advantage of competitors. In this case, the Open/Free projects that are being abused here ARE essentially competitors and the Ekush people are doing something detrimental to the Open/Free projects. This company is no better than the companies that snag Wikipedia entries and put up their own ad ridden "Free Encyclopaedias" without giving credit where credit is due.
There used to be an ad for some kind of MSN TV device that could (gasp!) record two shows at once. Whatever hapened to that. It was called something like "MSN New TV" or something like that.
...Microsoft trying to make money from licenses than it has to do with trying to make it harder for the average person to be a content producer and distributor vs. just being a consumer. It's still a bad thing, but do not let them convince you that licensing profits are at stake. Something bigger is at stake: your role as a consumer of services.
Quit whining like a baby, secure that shit and proceed private!! ;P
...that the article title sounds suspiciously like an "in Soviet Russia" joke? ;P
I mean, come on... this article is a natural for the whole "in Soviet Russia" line of humor.
You sir have made me laugh. You are now on my friends list.
OMFG!!! ROTFL!!! Osama IS a troll after all!
...al Qaeda has found it "easy for us to provoke and bait this administration."
;P
He said, and I quote:
And Bush is... a newbie from AOL!
ROTFLMAO!!!!!1111
Take a look at this guy's last Journal Entry and you will see what he has to say about the current state of Slashdot. It's true, and it's sad, Slashdot is truly lost.
Damn! And I just had mod points yesterday. The parent certainly deserves a +5 Insightful. While, I don't hold anyone's particular belief system in contempt, I do think it's unproductive to try and shoehorn the world into your particular way of thinking. The bible is a nice book with some guidelines for living. Some of those guidelines are good, others are WAY OFF BASE. It's not so much a history but more of a text based version of the telephone game. Use your heads people. This is about science and completely exclusive of religion. These guys didn't say , "god doesn't exist". They said, "Oh look! There is a similariy between rods and cones and the light sensitive brain cells of lower creatures".
You don't get out much, do you? ;P
First you make me say "wiki". Then you make me say "Business Week" and all that comes out is "Business Wiki". Maybe you're right. Maybe we are headed for a Wiki world... ;P
For the time being they are allowed to do so. (The last vestiges of what the U.S. used to be) With "four more years" it just might not be possible to do that unless you are a white evangelical with visions of hellfire and brimstone who votes conservatively. In my state we've got a "redefine marriage" issue on the ballot to say that marriage is only between a man and a woman. Many other states have similar issues on their ballots. Still think this is going to be a free country for long with people trying hard to take others rights from them?
Nice Troll. ;P Now if only Fox actually carried news...
...this is ever going to change. Someone will need to create a new protocol for sending mail that will provide the anti-spam features, but more importantly will provide some new, very desirable feature(s) that people will desperately want. This is the only way to get lazy asses to move to a new protocol. The problem lies in who that someone turns out to be. If Microsoft comes up with some whiz-bang new protocol for sending mail that does what I mentioned above, then all the folks who are Microsoft shops will move in that direction and the openess of the internet will have dissipated that much more. If Sun, or Novell do it (assuming they could manage to get an original idea out of their R&D at all. ;P ) the adoption of this new protocol would be slow. If the IETF come up with something, then we'll get the usual people joining in later in this order: *nix vendors first, ISPs with proprietary setups next, and finally Microsoft after their initial attempts at mimicking the IETF but in a backwards way fail. It happened with HTTP that way...
;P )
So the real question isn't, "how do we stop spam by getting rid of SMTP" but it's, "what can a new protocol do that will up the ante in functionality so that everyone and his brother just HAS to have it"? Personally, I have a completely different solution that I've been using with friends and family using freely available open source tools. Think about your phone numbers (work, home, cell) and you'll get the idea... (Come on folks! I can't feed you everything
fluorescent lamps have been deprecated for over four years - they're wasteful and short lived, if cheaper.
;P
When I moved into my place, 4 years ago, I decided to never buy another fluorescent lamp again. Over the next 2 years I replaced every lamp, as it blew, with an appropriate high-efficiency white LED array. I will have to replace the first of those in 2017.
Net saving is around 50 or 60 quid a year in electric and 100 or so per decade in lampage. 'Nuff said.
(I kid, I kid... because I love)
mememememememememe. Hehehe. I couldn't resist. ;P