Want to solve identity theft? Stop making the authentication so easily replayed.
Identity theft is too easy for two reasons:
1. The best uniquely identifying piece of information (in the US) is the SSN. It is a perfect username. And yet, we keep using it as both the username AND the password. It is stupid. Just because I know a unique name for a person shouldn't mean I can open a line of credit for him/her.
2. Even if there were a separate "secret" password, it wouldn't be secret once used. Every time you prove to someone that YOU are you in the current system, you empower that person to prove that HE is you. Let me say that again, because it is important: every time you prove to someone that YOU are you in the current system, you empower that person to prove that HE is you. And, even if you trust that guy, the information you have given can be stolen or lost by him and used by someone else you don't trust.
Instead, we need to find a good way to make public-key encryption work for the masses. Public-key encryption can be used to safeguard one's identity because the authentication is not so easily replayed.
Imagine a dedicated piece of hardware, similar in form-factor to a credit-card-sized calculator, complete with LCD display and numeric keys. Have that card be able to generate key-pairs and easily display and transmit the public key. Then, set up a ubiqitous public key infrastructure that financial institutions and others can use to verify that the public key you give them is really yours.
The government can actually be of help here. Nearly everyone in the US has to go to the DMV and get a driver's license. There is actually quite a bit of identity verification that goes on there, certainly compared to what goes on at a credit-card bank. If the DMV also provided a free key-signing service, then people could bring their key cards in and get their public-keys signed as belonging to the actual person in question.
Then, when a company that wants to authenticate that you really are who you claim to be, they can sign a challenge and send it to you. Your key-card can verify that the challenge is legitimate, and respond by signing their challenge using the stored private key. This private key, btw, would never be accessible off the card or shown in the LCD display.
The neat part about this is that the credentials necessary to prove you are you are never anywhere but that key-card in your possession. It can't be stolen from the bank's computer system or replayed by a retail clerk. Even if it gets physically stolen, they would need your PIN number to use it.
Also, because this would be mandated and use open standards, no one bank or institution would need to shoulder the costs. Each individual would have to purchase a conforming card only once and be able to use it for all financial transactions.
And that is just for one platform. If you want to use one of Qt's biggest strengths ("QT is very cross-platform.") you have to shell out $6600 to be able to compile for all three platforms.
Depending on the economics of your business, it may be worth the money, but "very affordable" it ain't.
This does not bring rail guns any closer to reality, by which I mean it does not bring military rail guns any closer to reality.
The Z-machine is a hanger-sized experimental device akin to a particle accelerator. This was an experiment designed to study extremely high pressures, such as those thought to have been important in Jovian planetary formation.
Saying that this experiment brings rail guns closer to reality is like saying that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN brings PPCs closer to reality.
They had a video during their live presentation which was attended by Senator Lieberman and covered by CSPAN. I didn't realize what it was, at first, because I was flipping through channels when I saw DOOM III being played. It turns out the video they were playing was a montage of various "problematic" games, including GFA and others, designed to show just how inappropriate to kids they were.
Towards the end, they showed the latest Leisure Suit Larry game and something called The Guy Game. The Guy Game, for those of you that aren't familiar with it, seems to be a trivia-type game that allows you to see real video of real girls taking off their tops when you answer correctly. Can you guess where this is going? Sure enough, their demo showed full boobage, which CSPAN did not censor. There were a good 5-10 seconds of actual, real (or at least not simulated) breasts running on CSPAN! This has got to be a first. Thank you, Senator Lieberman!
This was a vote about identity. The Republican party has been steadily convincing Christians that they are the party of Christ. It started with conservative brimstone and fire evangelicals and was dismissed by liberals as finge politics. Unfortunately, this sentiment has spread steadily until it encompasses not just the religious right, so much as the plain religious. Republicans have framed the argument as choosing between Democrats and God. Dems cannot win that fight.
Democrats have failed utterly, as candidates, to stand up and show believers how true Christians have more in common with Democratic values than Republican supply-siders. The only person I've heard harp on this is Al Franken, who is not exactly a voice evangelicals are going to trust.
Democrats need to show those with faith that the values of Jesus are the values of the Democrats. This will mean downplaying things like gay rights and abortion.
That is hilarious. I hadn't seen that; thank you. I agree with you that it says almost exactly what I'm saying, except in a satirical way. I'm tempted to show it to some of my conservative friends, but am afraid they would feel it mocks them, rather than the hypocrisy of George Bush. I guess I'll just have to share it with my liberal friends only. Thanks for the link!
The Bible teaches, I believe, that God the Father sent down to Earth his only son, Jesus Christ, to live as man among men. The Lord said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." God sent Jesus to be the example of how a man should live his life on Earth. Only by following the way, the truth, the life of Jesus, shall we come to know the Father. This is where the modern saying, "What would Jesus do?", comes from and makes it so much more than a simple statement of admiration. "What would Jesus do", in my understanding of the phrase, is the guideline of righteous living.
And so, in order to see what Christians should focus on when looking for leadership in their time on this Earth, they should look at what Jesus focused on while he was here, living the life of the righteous man.
How often did Jesus talk about homosexuality, abortion, or assisted suicide? Were these sins the focus of his ministry? Or did he focus on healing the sick and feeding the poor?
Did he beseech us to increase the wealth of the moneylenders, so that there would be more crumbs for the poor? Or did he believe that we should help the poor by... helping the poor?
Did Jesus limit his healing to those that could afford the money to pay him? Or did he reach out and touch all in need?
Did he focus on destroying enemies or loving them? Did he advocate war or peace?
I understand and admire evangelicals' conviction to vote their conscience and follow the Word, not just in church, but everywhere, every day. But, despite the Republicans throwing those that have strength of faith some Old Testament bones, it is the God-fearing liberal Democrats like John Kerry that best exemplify the self-sacrifice and social compassion Jesus had.
Can you really look at how George Bush reacts to the world and see him asking "What would Jesus do?" I cannot. I certainly can see him consulting the Bible and finding passages to console him. I certainly see that he believes God approves of his actions. What believer doesn't? But, try as I might, I cannot see in him a man doing as Jesus would do. Read Matthew 5:38-48 and tell me if you can hear the voice of George Bush.
Agree or disagree with the policies of George Bush and other Republicans on the merits as you will, but please don't make the mistake of thinking that George W. Bush is following the way, the truth, the life.
The US people have got to realise that the words 'compromise' and 'diplomacy' will get them a lot further
Actually most "US people" do realize that.
I wholeheartedly disagree. Most Americans (I'm sorry if it offends you that we have monopolized this term for ourselves, but we don't have much choice, since terms like "US people" are non-starters) don't respect compromise and diplomacy. Let me repeat that, because it is an important concept for non-Americans to understand about the only remaining superpower: Most Americans do not respect compromise and diplomacy. Most Americans respect strong, aggressive winners. To many Americans, patience, compromise, and diplomacy are code words for cowardice, naivete, or weakness. Think Neville Chamberlain. For many others, compromise and diplomacy are respected at an intellectual level, but don't inspire the respect at the emotional level like strong, decisive action.
Our society, at a deep, emotional level, is oriented towards competition, not cooperation. There is a winner and then there are the losers. Second place doesn't mean you were really good; it means you failed to win. Cooperation is seen only as a method for gaining a competitive edge against others. Once the competitor is vanquished, the need for cooperation is done.
I wish to stress that not all Americans believe this. Some of us do believe that we and everyone else would be better off if compromise and diplomacy were our modus operandi. But our culture of competition and our respect and admiration for strong, take-charge individuals (e.g. John Wayne) give lie to the statement that "most" Americans believe we'll get farther with compromise and diplomacy.
My entire argument could be rephrased as, "We've waited 100,000 years to do something about this; I think we can wait another 50 years for it to become much more affordable." Indeed, this argument makes sense only if the chances for an impact aren't any greater than they were before we could predict them.
I think it's the people who suddenly feel we have to spend billions on an intercept plan just because we finally have a prayer of being successful with one that need the statistics lesson, don't you?
Anatomically modern humans have been around about a hundred thousand years. That's roughly five or six THOUSAND generations. The chances that we get smacked by an asteroid within the lifetime of the first couple of generations that actually have a chance to see it coming is remote.
Yes, it would be bad.
Yes, it's going to happen if we don't stop it.
No, it's not going to happen in your lifetime.
No, I'm not giving you lots of money to try to stop one with primitive turn-of-the-millennium technology. When legitimate investments in space travel bring the cost of launch down and our robotics/sensors are better and our deep space propulsion systems are better, THEN I'll vote for spending money on a decent system.
Or I would, if I wasn't going to die in the global bio-weapons apocalypse of 2027.
The Golden Palace.com Space Program Powered by the da Vinci Project announced that it has revised its October 2nd planned flight to space in pursuit of the Ansari X PRIZE.
Given that they changed the name of the project to flatter their new sponsor, I find their flight patch graphic rather appropriate.
Sky Captain has green screen work with... even more green screen work.
This is the future of special effects movies, because of the creative freedom and reduced costs. The hardest part will be for actors to have something to act against. I think this gets solved by creating preliminary computer models as part of the concept art and using it to show the actors, in realtime, what they're interacting with.
Logically, the next question is if ZFS' 128 bits is enough. According to Bonwick, it has to be. "Populating 128-bit file systems would exceed the quantum limits of earth-based storage. You couldn't fill a 128-bit storage pool without boiling the oceans."
Hey, forget North Korea and Iran! It's these Sun guys we need to worry about!
It turns out that "Orizont" is just Romanian for "Big Bertha".
Yet another obscure American reference
on
Robot Walks on Water
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Yahoo! News has a story about a robot built to walk on water, much like small insects, bugs, and of course, Jesus.
You know, I'm getting really tired of Slashdot's American bias.
Don't they know that not all of their readers are going to get their obscure American pop culture references? The least they could do is include a link to the guy's website, or something. Besides, I'm sure he could probably use a little publicity outside of the US.
Something doesn't add up. If hurricanes were an actual threat to orbiters and other space vehicles, why would they build America's space port in frickin' Florida?
They knew about Florida hurricanes in the 60's, when they decided to build up Cape Canaveral.
They knew about Florida hurricanes in the 70's, when they designed the shuttle to fly from Cape Kennedy.
They knew about Florida hurricanes in the 80s, when STS flight operations began.
They knew about Florida hurricanes in the 90s, after the Challenger review of flight safety.
But now we are led to believe that we could lose a multi-billion dollar orbiter and cast the entire manned program into doubt because someone forgot that there might be a hurricane this year?
Bullshit. This is hype. The orbiters are safe in Florida. Move along. Nothing to see here.
Traditionally, science fiction movies are either a) very effects/action oriented or b) mostly wow factor from a "big idea".
Blade Runner is a story about humanity, life and death. It is about the feelings and emotions of the "people" and about seeing the moral complexity behind something that starts out seeming very black and white.
Are Roy and Pris, et al "bad guys"? Yes. But, after getting past expectations from action sci-fi, you begin to see why they are the way they are and you end up feeling more pity and relief than hatred and joy that they are dead.
It offers a poignancy most sci-fi distinctly lacks, although I have to admit I still tear up in the scene from 2010 when Chandra finally levels with HAL and trusts him/it to make the right decision. Is it a bad thing to so closely identify with a homicidal computer?
Anyway, the choice of a film noir style gives it a look and feel that seems much more rich and interesting than generic spaceship and space base interiors. And the saxophone work makes me feel like I do when I listen to "Us and Them" from Dark Side of the Moon.
As other posters have noted it definitely is a film that grows on you.
My eyes kept getting wider and wider! Granted, I wasn't aware of the object's size when I saw it, but still!
In case you miss it, those little circles around Earth that you can't even read when the animation begins are the orbits of geosynchronous satellites, such that provide GPS, weather images, and satellite TV!
Slashdot Mirror
Establishing Asian asses and Przewalski's horse in North America might help...
I don't know about that Prze-whatchamacallit thing, but bring on some of that Asian ass!
What? Oh. Never mind.
(No, I'm not twelve. I'm twelve and a HALF, thank-you-very-much!)
Want to solve identity theft? Stop making the authentication so easily replayed.
Identity theft is too easy for two reasons:
1. The best uniquely identifying piece of information (in the US) is the SSN. It is a perfect username. And yet, we keep using it as both the username AND the password. It is stupid. Just because I know a unique name for a person shouldn't mean I can open a line of credit for him/her.
2. Even if there were a separate "secret" password, it wouldn't be secret once used. Every time you prove to someone that YOU are you in the current system, you empower that person to prove that HE is you. Let me say that again, because it is important: every time you prove to someone that YOU are you in the current system, you empower that person to prove that HE is you. And, even if you trust that guy, the information you have given can be stolen or lost by him and used by someone else you don't trust.
Instead, we need to find a good way to make public-key encryption work for the masses. Public-key encryption can be used to safeguard one's identity because the authentication is not so easily replayed.
Imagine a dedicated piece of hardware, similar in form-factor to a credit-card-sized calculator, complete with LCD display and numeric keys. Have that card be able to generate key-pairs and easily display and transmit the public key. Then, set up a ubiqitous public key infrastructure that financial institutions and others can use to verify that the public key you give them is really yours.
The government can actually be of help here. Nearly everyone in the US has to go to the DMV and get a driver's license. There is actually quite a bit of identity verification that goes on there, certainly compared to what goes on at a credit-card bank. If the DMV also provided a free key-signing service, then people could bring their key cards in and get their public-keys signed as belonging to the actual person in question.
Then, when a company that wants to authenticate that you really are who you claim to be, they can sign a challenge and send it to you. Your key-card can verify that the challenge is legitimate, and respond by signing their challenge using the stored private key. This private key, btw, would never be accessible off the card or shown in the LCD display.
The neat part about this is that the credentials necessary to prove you are you are never anywhere but that key-card in your possession. It can't be stolen from the bank's computer system or replayed by a retail clerk. Even if it gets physically stolen, they would need your PIN number to use it.
Also, because this would be mandated and use open standards, no one bank or institution would need to shoulder the costs. Each individual would have to purchase a conforming card only once and be able to use it for all financial transactions.
$50 for DarkBasic is "very affordable".
$109 for Microsoft Visual C++ is "quite affordable".
$3300 for QT 4.0 Desktop is not "very affordable".
And that is just for one platform. If you want to use one of Qt's biggest strengths ("QT is very cross-platform.") you have to shell out $6600 to be able to compile for all three platforms.
Depending on the economics of your business, it may be worth the money, but "very affordable" it ain't.
The article's title is extremely misleading.
This does not bring rail guns any closer to reality, by which I mean it does not bring military rail guns any closer to reality.
The Z-machine is a hanger-sized experimental device akin to a particle accelerator. This was an experiment designed to study extremely high pressures, such as those thought to have been important in Jovian planetary formation.
Saying that this experiment brings rail guns closer to reality is like saying that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN brings PPCs closer to reality.
Suddenly my 3:30pm urology appointment just got a little more scary.
They had a video during their live presentation which was attended by Senator Lieberman and covered by CSPAN. I didn't realize what it was, at first, because I was flipping through channels when I saw DOOM III being played. It turns out the video they were playing was a montage of various "problematic" games, including GFA and others, designed to show just how inappropriate to kids they were.
Towards the end, they showed the latest Leisure Suit Larry game and something called The Guy Game. The Guy Game, for those of you that aren't familiar with it, seems to be a trivia-type game that allows you to see real video of real girls taking off their tops when you answer correctly. Can you guess where this is going? Sure enough, their demo showed full boobage, which CSPAN did not censor. There were a good 5-10 seconds of actual, real (or at least not simulated) breasts running on CSPAN! This has got to be a first. Thank you, Senator Lieberman!
By the way, I am gay and I voted for Bush.
How beautifully ironic.
I guess I can see how a gay man would be willing to put up with Bush if it meant getting four more years of Dick.
(Sorry. That was just too good to pass up.)
I agree.
This was a vote about identity. The Republican party has been steadily convincing Christians that they are the party of Christ. It started with conservative brimstone and fire evangelicals and was dismissed by liberals as finge politics. Unfortunately, this sentiment has spread steadily until it encompasses not just the religious right, so much as the plain religious. Republicans have framed the argument as choosing between Democrats and God. Dems cannot win that fight.
Democrats have failed utterly, as candidates, to stand up and show believers how true Christians have more in common with Democratic values than Republican supply-siders. The only person I've heard harp on this is Al Franken, who is not exactly a voice evangelicals are going to trust.
Democrats need to show those with faith that the values of Jesus are the values of the Democrats. This will mean downplaying things like gay rights and abortion.
That is hilarious. I hadn't seen that; thank you. I agree with you that it says almost exactly what I'm saying, except in a satirical way. I'm tempted to show it to some of my conservative friends, but am afraid they would feel it mocks them, rather than the hypocrisy of George Bush. I guess I'll just have to share it with my liberal friends only. Thanks for the link!
The Bible teaches, I believe, that God the Father sent down to Earth his only son, Jesus Christ, to live as man among men. The Lord said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." God sent Jesus to be the example of how a man should live his life on Earth. Only by following the way, the truth, the life of Jesus, shall we come to know the Father. This is where the modern saying, "What would Jesus do?", comes from and makes it so much more than a simple statement of admiration. "What would Jesus do", in my understanding of the phrase, is the guideline of righteous living.
... helping the poor?
And so, in order to see what Christians should focus on when looking for leadership in their time on this Earth, they should look at what Jesus focused on while he was here, living the life of the righteous man.
How often did Jesus talk about homosexuality, abortion, or assisted suicide? Were these sins the focus of his ministry? Or did he focus on healing the sick and feeding the poor?
Did he beseech us to increase the wealth of the moneylenders, so that there would be more crumbs for the poor? Or did he believe that we should help the poor by
Did Jesus limit his healing to those that could afford the money to pay him? Or did he reach out and touch all in need?
Did he focus on destroying enemies or loving them? Did he advocate war or peace?
I understand and admire evangelicals' conviction to vote their conscience and follow the Word, not just in church, but everywhere, every day. But, despite the Republicans throwing those that have strength of faith some Old Testament bones, it is the God-fearing liberal Democrats like John Kerry that best exemplify the self-sacrifice and social compassion Jesus had.
Can you really look at how George Bush reacts to the world and see him asking "What would Jesus do?" I cannot. I certainly can see him consulting the Bible and finding passages to console him. I certainly see that he believes God approves of his actions. What believer doesn't? But, try as I might, I cannot see in him a man doing as Jesus would do. Read Matthew 5:38-48 and tell me if you can hear the voice of George Bush.
Agree or disagree with the policies of George Bush and other Republicans on the merits as you will, but please don't make the mistake of thinking that George W. Bush is following the way, the truth, the life.
Our society, at a deep, emotional level, is oriented towards competition, not cooperation. There is a winner and then there are the losers. Second place doesn't mean you were really good; it means you failed to win. Cooperation is seen only as a method for gaining a competitive edge against others. Once the competitor is vanquished, the need for cooperation is done.
I wish to stress that not all Americans believe this. Some of us do believe that we and everyone else would be better off if compromise and diplomacy were our modus operandi. But our culture of competition and our respect and admiration for strong, take-charge individuals (e.g. John Wayne) give lie to the statement that "most" Americans believe we'll get farther with compromise and diplomacy.
No. No we cannot.
Most of the things that make people prefer Python to Perl have to do with the language itself, not the runtime.
To paraphrase a famous Simpsons quote: "My eyes...the runtime does nothing!"
At least we know THEY'RE not behind the CBS Bush memos.
I totally agree.
My entire argument could be rephrased as, "We've waited 100,000 years to do something about this; I think we can wait another 50 years for it to become much more affordable." Indeed, this argument makes sense only if the chances for an impact aren't any greater than they were before we could predict them.
I think it's the people who suddenly feel we have to spend billions on an intercept plan just because we finally have a prayer of being successful with one that need the statistics lesson, don't you?
Anatomically modern humans have been around about a hundred thousand years. That's roughly five or six THOUSAND generations. The chances that we get smacked by an asteroid within the lifetime of the first couple of generations that actually have a chance to see it coming is remote.
Yes, it would be bad.
Yes, it's going to happen if we don't stop it.
No, it's not going to happen in your lifetime.
No, I'm not giving you lots of money to try to stop one with primitive turn-of-the-millennium technology. When legitimate investments in space travel bring the cost of launch down and our robotics/sensors are better and our deep space propulsion systems are better, THEN I'll vote for spending money on a decent system.
Or I would, if I wasn't going to die in the global bio-weapons apocalypse of 2027.
The Golden Palace.com Space Program Powered by the da Vinci Project announced that it has revised its October 2nd planned flight to space in pursuit of the Ansari X PRIZE.
Given that they changed the name of the project to flatter their new sponsor, I find their flight patch graphic rather appropriate.
Star Wars had sets with some green screen work.
... even more green screen work.
Sky Captain has green screen work with
This is the future of special effects movies, because of the creative freedom and reduced costs. The hardest part will be for actors to have something to act against. I think this gets solved by creating preliminary computer models as part of the concept art and using it to show the actors, in realtime, what they're interacting with.
Logically, the next question is if ZFS' 128 bits is enough. According to Bonwick, it has to be. "Populating 128-bit file systems would exceed the quantum limits of earth-based storage. You couldn't fill a 128-bit storage pool without boiling the oceans."
Hey, forget North Korea and Iran! It's these Sun guys we need to worry about!
It turns out that "Orizont" is just Romanian for "Big Bertha".
Don't they know that not all of their readers are going to get their obscure American pop culture references? The least they could do is include a link to the guy's website, or something. Besides, I'm sure he could probably use a little publicity outside of the US.
It's both - a DVR and DVD-writer. It looks like the content is "recorded" onto the hard drive a la Tivo and from there quickly burned to normal DVDs.
Something doesn't add up. If hurricanes were an actual threat to orbiters and other space vehicles, why would they build America's space port in frickin' Florida?
They knew about Florida hurricanes in the 60's, when they decided to build up Cape Canaveral.
They knew about Florida hurricanes in the 70's, when they designed the shuttle to fly from Cape Kennedy.
They knew about Florida hurricanes in the 80s, when STS flight operations began.
They knew about Florida hurricanes in the 90s, after the Challenger review of flight safety.
But now we are led to believe that we could lose a multi-billion dollar orbiter and cast the entire manned program into doubt because someone forgot that there might be a hurricane this year?
Bullshit. This is hype. The orbiters are safe in Florida. Move along. Nothing to see here.
Traditionally, science fiction movies are either a) very effects/action oriented or b) mostly wow factor from a "big idea".
Blade Runner is a story about humanity, life and death. It is about the feelings and emotions of the "people" and about seeing the moral complexity behind something that starts out seeming very black and white.
Are Roy and Pris, et al "bad guys"? Yes. But, after getting past expectations from action sci-fi, you begin to see why they are the way they are and you end up feeling more pity and relief than hatred and joy that they are dead.
It offers a poignancy most sci-fi distinctly lacks, although I have to admit I still tear up in the scene from 2010 when Chandra finally levels with HAL and trusts him/it to make the right decision. Is it a bad thing to so closely identify with a homicidal computer?
Anyway, the choice of a film noir style gives it a look and feel that seems much more rich and interesting than generic spaceship and space base interiors. And the saxophone work makes me feel like I do when I listen to "Us and Them" from Dark Side of the Moon.
As other posters have noted it definitely is a film that grows on you.
My eyes kept getting wider and wider! Granted, I wasn't aware of the object's size when I saw it, but still!
In case you miss it, those little circles around Earth that you can't even read when the animation begins are the orbits of geosynchronous satellites, such that provide GPS, weather images, and satellite TV!
It's an animated GIF, btw.