Virtually anything 'government'ish will require uniqueness. Getting electronic prescriptions dispensed, online voting, motor vehicle ownership changes, etc.
Yes, there are civil liberties concerns, and they are very valid. The fact remains that uniqueness is necessary if certain functions are to be carried out online. Therefore PGP signing is not sufficient.
These are just observations, and some of them are very overcomeable and possibly stupid.
Security of private keys. This is not really different from security of any other 'passphrase' except it is local.
Computation. Especially for bulletin boards -/. has a huge number of comments every day. To PGP-process each one would require much more expense on their side with no obvious benefits.
Trusted key repositories. If something like this was to become huge then you would need central databases of everyone's public keys (far more scalable than current incarnations). This is tied in with:
Identity management. There is nothing stopping you from having multiple public/private key combinations. (OK, there is nothing stopping you from having multiple/. accounts). But there are uses where you need uniqueness online. Yes, this is also a problem for any single sign-on scheme. Verification has privacy implications unless handled very carefully.
Single point of failure. Regardless of how well tested the PGP encryption algorithms are, cryptanalysis will continue. Security should almost always have breadth to increase resilience. To be honest I would probably consider this to be an acceptable risk for non-critical uses.
Training. In order to be useful a lot of people have to use PGP. The concept of a username/passphrase is far easier to digest than PGP-signing.
There are probably many other obvious concerns. Note: it could easily become widespread, but I'm just saying that there are issues which need to be addressed.
Check out officialforums for confirmation. ISO available here, why not use the Coral Cache and save a/.ing? It has nifty new firewalling in addition to all the usual updates. This version was released from the German PC-Welt magazine and is in German only, but using lang=whatever at boot time will cure that. It will obviously differ from the 'official' 3.7 CD which should come out soon, but not by much - so worth a CD-RW for the curious I suppose. md5sums are spewed around the net, no point me quoting one as I am not to be trusted (TM). testcd is a useful check.
can anyone create clean, efficient, browser-compatible code that is easy to maintain and intuitive for multiple developers to use
There are more people out there with knowledge about all sorts of amazing stuff outside modal geek interests, who have been able to share it with the world despite not 'understanding' good web design principles. This is largely due to basic HTML being so straightforward, and 'fault-tolerant' browser interpretations (not to mention the plethora of authoring tools). Because of this, things are kludged and incompatible between browsers etc, but I prefer this infinitely to the content not being there.
It's not ALL about the presentation, uber-133tness and bandwidth!
Of course, there is no excuse for browsers not adhering to standards for when things ARE coded up properly (or at least explaining how and why they are deviating from the standard).
PS All the above doesn't really apply to 'non-hobbyist' sites either - if you are running a 'professional' website you should do things properly.
For legal purposes there is a requirement for the validation of signatures and handwritten documents. A helpful method in this respect is the so-called superposed strokes analysis, based on the observation of some characteristics in the writing, such as some letters and their dynamics.
This paper introduces a promising new technique for superposed strokes analysis based on conoscopic holography. Through a non-contact 3D measure a 3D profile is created of the superposed strokes that allows the writing dynamics to be determined, such as, for example, if a stroke was drawn clockwise or counterclockwise.
We propose a 3D analysis by an opto-electronic system, in order to improve the graphology analysis for off-line signature verification.
I respectfully disagree. In questions of morality versus legality, morality wins every time. I happen to like a rather obscure form of eastern classical music with a lot of artists from before the 1950s. Is it 'moral' to download/share copies of this work with friends (knowing that there ARE copies available but very rare?). I think so - especially given the fact that given AVAILABILITY I would buy them at a shot. Should copyright law prevent reprinting of obscurish material, just because the RECORD COMPANY (not the artist) says so? I take this to be a travesty of the intention of the creators of copyright legislation, who couldn't have foreseen such an available medium as the internet (and even if this were in line with THEIR intentions, I cannot justify it to myself, the only authority to which I am known to be ultimately responsible).
In any personal relationship, friendship and courtesy (and the sharing implicit in that, be it of emotions, ideas, music or more tangible things) are paramount. This interaction isn't present with most corporations, and certainly not most industry lobby groups. As Rousseau in 'Social Contract' (or perhaps, more accessibly, Lessig in 'Free Culture') would argue, we have no particular debt of respect or obligation towards them. As much as it hurts my rather Gandhian ideals, there must be SOME degree of simultaneity in trust.
Moreover, we've lost recourse in the legal system (here in the UK and otherwise), as it has 1) become far too complicated for anyone 2) become infested with large lobbying groups. 1) means we're down to such a level of nitty-grittying that it isn't possible, even with the very best of intentions (ie ignoring 2)), to create judgements which are universally (or even necessarily majority-wise equitable). The lawyers' obsession with precedent is depressing. 2) means that we are obligated at a grassroots level to promoting art libre.
All these lead to the inescapable conclusion that I will do what I feel just (note: not what I feel LIKE DOING a la Machiavelli). Teaching kids that copyright is the altar before which we must torture ourselves seems to be a dangerously flawed view of society, and of the way it should develop.
In some sense, PPP is precisely a mechanism to compare apples to oranges (or euros to rupees). Factors like level and quality of internet access can be more 'finely tuned' (up to the usual observational errors, statistical torture, and the usual micro-level dangers) than the Big Mac Index.
Indeed, by its nature, the BMI is light-hearted and not to be taken TOO seriously, but the only reason it has gained kudos is through its (almost certainly fluky) "correlation" with reality combined with its potential for quirky wit. Although I'm not completely certain on details of computation, elementary details such as size/growth of the fast food sector in the country and of McDonalds popularity within that sector are surely taken into account. But it is all too easy for nuances (eg, a temporary illiquidity in transportation due to flooding) to have a disproportionate effect on single indicators.
This is why actuaries and other statisticians use weighted indices to measure ANYTHING substantially liquid (of which exchange rates are the quintessential example) - this is why the Nikkei, FTSE and Goldman Sachs Commodities indices exist. By taking more factors into consideration, I can get a far more accurate picture of whether I am paying the right number of apples for your oranges.
This is a gross oversimplification, and I'm not an economist anyway, so it would be helpful if someone in the know could clarify the more confusing points.
We can start compiling better (and statistically, better 'weighted') indicators of PPP than the incredibly successful (but somewhat outdated) Big Mac Index.
This is exactly fulfilling the remit of the BBC, and demonstrates perfectly why most Brits are happy paying the TV licence fee. The Creative Commons style copylefting is a wonderful touch, and shows how "in tune" the BBC is to the mood of the public.
Nevertheless, there are important financial considerations which we should not overlook.
It seems to me that concerns about bandwidth and lucrative overseas syndication deals will probably mean that "direct" access is limited to UK addresses (at least initially). Despite this, licensing revenue will inevitably decline. Combined with the decrease in income from DVD sales, and the phenomenal cost of digitizing, hosting and maintaining the archive, this probably adds up to a significant licence fee increase. This is on top of the additional fee already imposed for digital viewers.
Politically, many in the government want to punish the BBC for its relentless Iraq questioning. However, Tessa Jowell, the minister in charge, has made encouraging noises. I have a great deal of respect for the BBC, but I sincerely hope (and unfortunately doubt) they can justify their "techno-edge" spending in a potentially politically hostile climate when their Charter comes under review in 2006.
There are legitimate concerns about privacy, but I'm fairly sure that a large proportion of the 4x10^6 cameras are privately owned. It is a shop owner's prerogative as to whether he or she wants to have the comfort of CCTV, and most agree that it is a good idea.
Please understand the cultural norms are different in Britain to America; people feel comfortable with the concept of CCTV in public but would be horrified at the way detailed information about your life is available to corporations etc. The Data Protection Act is surprisingly powerful.
I think the issue is that only the serious tinfoils object to individual cameras. With every second person on the street having a camera phone etc, it would make life rather difficult! It is more the systemization which perhaps is a legitimate concern. Even people with something to hide generally don't care too much about the cameras because it is quite clear that given private ownership etc linking the information up would be a time consuming task. When this changes (as is now technologically possible I guess) then perhaps it is time to start worrying a bit.
The tactics of this particular company sound a bit iffy, true. But why exactly should someone equally qualified willing to work for less not get the job?
It is very hard on those who it affects, but the economic reality is that the money saved in efficiencies (even if it only goes towards fat cat bonuses) is very tangible.
There is illiquidity in labour pools because of immigration laws etc., but the internet removes these barriers. The global workplace is here, and as a result the market is freer than before.
It is quite feasible that if (eg) Russia in fifty years time will farm out its "boring" nanotech analysis work to the US. Like it or not, standards of living in 2nd and 3rd world countries are going to improve, sometimes at the expense of sections of the 1st world. However, overall and in the long-term, competition leads to better economies all round.
Yeah, I hate redundancy in my TLA acronyms, but I can't stay, my ABS system in my car has broken - the DC current overloaded as it was controlled by the DOS operating system - it says so via an LED diode on my LCD display here.
Incidentally, I'm having a GOP party to celebrate passing my GRE exam, please RSVP.
PS, these paragraph things are funky, don't you love HTML language?
Please don't expect to "scale" supercomputing with any sort of linearity, either in terms of "cost" or "power" (doublequotes because methinks both concepts are rather ill-defined in this situation)...
The remark was made in a flippant offhand manner, and is unfair. I know MJ has been heavily mocked, but thank you for providing details of the actual syndrome he has - it's genuinely informative.
While tasteless humour can be very funny, I often find it very easy to misjudge the situation through my ironic distance from it, and become overly cruel without recognising the genuine sensitivities of others.
Please don't get me wrong; I agree with your point. But also note it is easier to generalise about the open source "community" than (eg) the black "community" because people choose to be open source developers. Unless you take the Michael Jackson route, skin colour isn't something you can alter with your actions - being an open source proponent is.
At the risk of falling into the correlation/causation trap, it is far more likely that open source devs share more community characteristics than black people.
The great thing about free (beer) spam filters is that there is no possible profit motive whatsoever... and unlike the AV industry which needs to be up to date in a matter of minutes (requiring expensive labs etc) spam filtering requires relatively few resources, especially Bayesian type filters which only run locally.
Slashdot Mirror
While you're at it, why not check out the original paper. Warning: hard to read.
Yes, there are civil liberties concerns, and they are very valid. The fact remains that uniqueness is necessary if certain functions are to be carried out online. Therefore PGP signing is not sufficient.
Security of private keys. This is not really different from security of any other 'passphrase' except it is local.
Computation. Especially for bulletin boards - /. has a huge number of comments every day. To PGP-process each one would require much more expense on their side with no obvious benefits.
Trusted key repositories. If something like this was to become huge then you would need central databases of everyone's public keys (far more scalable than current incarnations). This is tied in with:
Identity management. There is nothing stopping you from having multiple public/private key combinations. (OK, there is nothing stopping you from having multiple /. accounts). But there are uses where you need uniqueness online. Yes, this is also a problem for any single sign-on scheme. Verification has privacy implications unless handled very carefully.
Single point of failure. Regardless of how well tested the PGP encryption algorithms are, cryptanalysis will continue. Security should almost always have breadth to increase resilience. To be honest I would probably consider this to be an acceptable risk for non-critical uses.
Training. In order to be useful a lot of people have to use PGP. The concept of a username/passphrase is far easier to digest than PGP-signing.
There are probably many other obvious concerns. Note: it could easily become widespread, but I'm just saying that there are issues which need to be addressed.
Try MS IE blog as a first port of call, although I doubt they will listen. Still, some amusing posts there.
Oh wait, nevermind (-;
Here's a tip but it's not well publicized (esp useful to people on dialup)
;-)
n _Call.mp3" without the spaces put in by /. and without the doublequotes.
STEP 1: Open your favourite text editor (or operating system, as the case may be
STEP 2: Type in "http://brokenwindow.ca.nyud.net:8090/images/Ster
STEP 3: Save it as "whatever.m3u". Open it in the media player of your choice, and it will be streamed instead of downloaded. Hurrah!
Check out official forums for confirmation. ISO available here, why not use the Coral Cache and save a /.ing? It has nifty new firewalling in addition to all the usual updates. This version was released from the German PC-Welt magazine and is in German only, but using lang=whatever at boot time will cure that. It will obviously differ from the 'official' 3.7 CD which should come out soon, but not by much - so worth a CD-RW for the curious I suppose. md5sums are spewed around the net, no point me quoting one as I am not to be trusted (TM). testcd is a useful check.
It's not ALL about the presentation, uber-133tness and bandwidth!
Of course, there is no excuse for browsers not adhering to standards for when things ARE coded up properly (or at least explaining how and why they are deviating from the standard).
PS All the above doesn't really apply to 'non-hobbyist' sites either - if you are running a 'professional' website you should do things properly.
Abstract
For legal purposes there is a requirement for the validation of signatures and handwritten documents. A helpful method in this respect is the so-called superposed strokes analysis, based on the observation of some characteristics in the writing, such as some letters and their dynamics.
This paper introduces a promising new technique for superposed strokes analysis based on conoscopic holography. Through a non-contact 3D measure a 3D profile is created of the superposed strokes that allows the writing dynamics to be determined, such as, for example, if a stroke was drawn clockwise or counterclockwise.
We propose a 3D analysis by an opto-electronic system, in order to improve the graphology analysis for off-line signature verification.
In any personal relationship, friendship and courtesy (and the sharing implicit in that, be it of emotions, ideas, music or more tangible things) are paramount. This interaction isn't present with most corporations, and certainly not most industry lobby groups. As Rousseau in 'Social Contract' (or perhaps, more accessibly, Lessig in 'Free Culture') would argue, we have no particular debt of respect or obligation towards them. As much as it hurts my rather Gandhian ideals, there must be SOME degree of simultaneity in trust.
Moreover, we've lost recourse in the legal system (here in the UK and otherwise), as it has 1) become far too complicated for anyone 2) become infested with large lobbying groups. 1) means we're down to such a level of nitty-grittying that it isn't possible, even with the very best of intentions (ie ignoring 2)), to create judgements which are universally (or even necessarily majority-wise equitable). The lawyers' obsession with precedent is depressing. 2) means that we are obligated at a grassroots level to promoting art libre.
All these lead to the inescapable conclusion that I will do what I feel just (note: not what I feel LIKE DOING a la Machiavelli). Teaching kids that copyright is the altar before which we must torture ourselves seems to be a dangerously flawed view of society, and of the way it should develop.
Lastly, it was (obviously?) a joke - lighten up!
Jabber the Lawyer
Indeed, by its nature, the BMI is light-hearted and not to be taken TOO seriously, but the only reason it has gained kudos is through its (almost certainly fluky) "correlation" with reality combined with its potential for quirky wit. Although I'm not completely certain on details of computation, elementary details such as size/growth of the fast food sector in the country and of McDonalds popularity within that sector are surely taken into account. But it is all too easy for nuances (eg, a temporary illiquidity in transportation due to flooding) to have a disproportionate effect on single indicators.
This is why actuaries and other statisticians use weighted indices to measure ANYTHING substantially liquid (of which exchange rates are the quintessential example) - this is why the Nikkei, FTSE and Goldman Sachs Commodities indices exist. By taking more factors into consideration, I can get a far more accurate picture of whether I am paying the right number of apples for your oranges.
This is a gross oversimplification, and I'm not an economist anyway, so it would be helpful if someone in the know could clarify the more confusing points.
We can start compiling better (and statistically, better 'weighted') indicators of PPP than the incredibly successful (but somewhat outdated) Big Mac Index.
Nevertheless, there are important financial considerations which we should not overlook.
It seems to me that concerns about bandwidth and lucrative overseas syndication deals will probably mean that "direct" access is limited to UK addresses (at least initially). Despite this, licensing revenue will inevitably decline. Combined with the decrease in income from DVD sales, and the phenomenal cost of digitizing, hosting and maintaining the archive, this probably adds up to a significant licence fee increase. This is on top of the additional fee already imposed for digital viewers.
Politically, many in the government want to punish the BBC for its relentless Iraq questioning. However, Tessa Jowell, the minister in charge, has made encouraging noises. I have a great deal of respect for the BBC, but I sincerely hope (and unfortunately doubt) they can justify their "techno-edge" spending in a potentially politically hostile climate when their Charter comes under review in 2006.
Please understand the cultural norms are different in Britain to America; people feel comfortable with the concept of CCTV in public but would be horrified at the way detailed information about your life is available to corporations etc. The Data Protection Act is surprisingly powerful.
I think the issue is that only the serious tinfoils object to individual cameras. With every second person on the street having a camera phone etc, it would make life rather difficult! It is more the systemization which perhaps is a legitimate concern. Even people with something to hide generally don't care too much about the cameras because it is quite clear that given private ownership etc linking the information up would be a time consuming task. When this changes (as is now technologically possible I guess) then perhaps it is time to start worrying a bit.
Warning: not for the faint-hearted!
It is very hard on those who it affects, but the economic reality is that the money saved in efficiencies (even if it only goes towards fat cat bonuses) is very tangible.
There is illiquidity in labour pools because of immigration laws etc., but the internet removes these barriers. The global workplace is here, and as a result the market is freer than before.
It is quite feasible that if (eg) Russia in fifty years time will farm out its "boring" nanotech analysis work to the US. Like it or not, standards of living in 2nd and 3rd world countries are going to improve, sometimes at the expense of sections of the 1st world. However, overall and in the long-term, competition leads to better economies all round.
Hmmm... what if you try to buy it online with your credit card? I'm confused, someone define a metric here...
Incidentally, I'm having a GOP party to celebrate passing my GRE exam, please RSVP.
PS, these paragraph things are funky, don't you love HTML language?
Please don't expect to "scale" supercomputing with any sort of linearity, either in terms of "cost" or "power" (doublequotes because methinks both concepts are rather ill-defined in this situation)...
The remark was made in a flippant offhand manner, and is unfair. I know MJ has been heavily mocked, but thank you for providing details of the actual syndrome he has - it's genuinely informative.
While tasteless humour can be very funny, I often find it very easy to misjudge the situation through my ironic distance from it, and become overly cruel without recognising the genuine sensitivities of others.
Thank you for keeping me in check.
It doesn't imply universal guilt; however it might be indicative of institutional "guilt", be it wilful or negligent (cf Catholic priests).
Can you apply the same logic to open source? I don't know, I still haven't graduated from the famous Slashdot School of Analogy.
At the risk of falling into the correlation/causation trap, it is far more likely that open source devs share more community characteristics than black people.
The great thing about free (beer) spam filters is that there is no possible profit motive whatsoever... and unlike the AV industry which needs to be up to date in a matter of minutes (requiring expensive labs etc) spam filtering requires relatively few resources, especially Bayesian type filters which only run locally.
OK, OK... poetic license... errr.... yeah... What, did you think I didn't RTA or something?