Even the dirt casts a shadow... zoom in tight enough and light it enough (notice that there's a bright light aimed at exactly that spot in any EZ-Pass lane?) and they can still figure it out, even if the OCR chokes and passes it to human review. Also, the humans can double-check against the make, model, and color of the car since that's always in the registry database too. If one's red and the other's blue, it becomes a whole lot easier to solve...
The tickets for the most important violations are issued in person... and accident reports are always always done in person. Better make sure the lookalike doesn't get in a crash... the real RIP will have airtight proof that their body and their car is unharmed.
You wouldn't know which unit to deactivate to get rid of people who don't pay their dues... and subbing in and out units every month would get quite pricy.
Besides, the spooks could just forget about the E-Z Pass ID and use the booth cameras that record every transaction, E-Z Pass or cash, anyway. Little harder to search that tape since OCR isn't perfect, but still possible to do it manually.
Every state that uses EZ-Pass will gladly provide you with an anti-static bag to keep your tag in when you don't want to use it.
But, the other issue is that the EZ-Pass is a very directional RFID system. You must be able to emit a sginal below the car to trigger it, and read that signal above the car. It'd be nearly impossible to set up such a system secretly...
EZ-Pass in fact requires cameras on all EZ-Pass lanes. If a car going through the lane fails to identify itself to EZ-Pass and the plates aren't registered in the system, a violator's toll and penalty is on the way. However, if its just that your transponder has warn out, your plate is matched to your account, and when you turn in your old transponder for a new one your account is adjusted back to charge you only the normal tolls.
The main Fast Lane (what we call EZ-Pass in MA) Center has an interesting entry-way design. Once you walk in the first double-doors you walk into a small lobby with two doors, one on each side. Signs direct tagholders go to the left where they are greeted with friendly and happy employees, people who have been given violation notices are directed to go to the right where the environment isn't quite as welcoming.
Also, this isn't truely RFID. You need to send quite the signal to make an E-Z Pass identify itself, and then quite the antenna above to catch the signal you generated. Therefore, nobody can really do so secretly, you'd need a structure the size of, uhm, a toll booth, if you were gonna try to mask it.:)
EZ-Pass stores only the data that's needed to bill you, and no matter what a court can always demand that be turned over if there's a good reason to.
The non-toll sensors mentioned in the article are intentionally designed not to identify users, just to allow the Thruway authority to track the average speeds on the road. The state authorities really don't have much incentive to write speeding tickets for reasons reasons other than safety in New York State, because the fines are payable to the city or town in which the ticket was written, even if by a state cop. For that reason any "You couldn't get from Point A to Point B that fast!" ticket in NYS would have the instant problem of all the mayors from A to B fighting over who deserves the money.
"this will hopefully help the development of... ways to communicate over long distances without being eavesdropped on"
We already have that. Light based fiber runs are impossible to tap into without having to break the connectivity to hook up an additional device. Of course, nothing goes coast-to-coast directly, so they're plenty of chances for the spooks to install their logging equipment at a switching station or router.
The only way to communicate securely without encryption is to totally control physical access to the line, which just plain isn't gonna happen over long distances.
One issue that TiVo may have with users downloading the images is that if you ever put a Brand X image into a a Brand Y TiVo, it's going to give the appearance of working, but the software version will not match the most current release number for the Brand Y model. During the daily call, the device will then try to download the most current release of Brand Y software, only to fail because Brand Y software can't be installed over Brand X software. TiVo ends up having to pay through the for long modem calls until the mistake is noticed and the user is forced to install proper software. TiVo's fine with user hacks that don't threaten them, but having the images "out there" gives users a path to hacks gone wrong.
TiVo's most likely letting the commerical vendors continue to distribute the software because they're smart enough to ask users what brand of TiVo they're using, and only ship the matching release of software for their machine.
The RIAA can't change business models. Because, the recording industry is who they are, and the winners of any new business model will be "somebody else", some form of interest who isn't a member of and will never join the RIAA.
So, the only tactic the RIAA has left is "It's the law, deal with it!" so no wonder they're turning to law enforcement for somebody who doesn't care how bad the PR gets...
And that's where Buckles' reputation of charging through no matter what the reaction is going to be is key. He's basically from the "zero-tolerance" camp where the punishment is doled out, and any resistance is seen as an authorization to use more force.
Guess now instead of sending federal agents he'll be sending attack lawyers...
Statutory rape is a crime defined by the state law in all 50 states... but the ATF doesn't enforce state laws, that's the job state and local police.
And that's where the trivial nature of the gun charges come in. It's questionable why Buckles saw fit for his agency to be involved in the situation. No doubt that Koresh deserved to be busted, but the most serious charges against him were not on the ATF's beat. Storm first, ask questions later... perfect qualifications for working for the RIAA?
Try triggering on a shelf and you'll get readings from a few thousand books, and still not be accurate enough to tell you if a book is in exactly the right place. A book placed on a shelf that's three spots higher than it belongs is still a lost book that might take years to notice, and result in frustrated attempted borrowers not knowing where to start their search...
Yes, but one of the greatest problems in large libraries is when a checked-in book gets placed on a shelf other than the one it belongs on. A needle in the haystack situation results.
Robot book-searchers means that the stacks can be nearly completely closed to human access, since a failed robot delivery is far more likely to result in a book being placed out of bounds where it will stand out than neatly placed in the wrong pile, and even then the discrepancy would soon be discovered when the robot discovers n+1 books in a pile the computer records say it should only be finding n books.
They might not be cheaper, but they certainly would be more accurate and dramatically cut the risk of books being lost within a library.
Hardware firewalls cost money, and software firewalls have to rely on the operating system beneath them to be uncorrupted.
This is a solution that can be made out of spare PC parts, and is lightweight enough to work just fine on last generation's equipment. Any true geek likely has enough spare parts lying around in their basement from retired machines to build this.
Why does SmoothWall insist on being alone on the machine? Because the firewall is supposed to be absolutely stable, so there's no business for any other application to be mucking around. At worst, letting a user run other software could allow for the possiblity of the user being tricked into running software that undermines the firewall. It's newsworthy that SmoothWall is advancing on their Linux kernel selection, they don't do so very often because they don't often need the new OS features, and the last thing they want is to be discovering new bugs on a firewall.
Basically, this is turning a nearly-useless PC into a hardware firewall...
Maybe a whole company. Archipelago now has a lot of explaining to do about their regulatory practices. The stock market system depends on self-regulation by the exchanges, and this newcomer got caught making a very questionable early decloration that things were all clear, while NASDAQ took longer but got made the right call. Archipelago then got reduced to copying off of NASDAQ's homework, and leaving some of its own customers holding the bag.
Here's the problem with your timeline. At 11:19 AM, trading didn't restart at NASDAQ. It restarted at Archipelago. When trading re-started as NASDAQ, there was a simultanious warning that it was likely the pre-stoppage trades would be reversed.
Sure, there was out of line behavior, but it happened at Archipelago... who is a completely different operation. The moral of the story is to trust NASDAQ for a fairly played market, and beware of Archipelago opening trading too soon on stocks that should remain halted.
However, Archipelago was the first to make the decision to resume trading, so most of the people who got burned did so there. NASDAQ then was caught in a no-mans-land of decision making... their investigation hadn't yet returned an explanation, but Archipelago's actions indicated that they had already made a decision that the trades were going to stick.
For a trading halt to be effective, there has to be a trading halt everywhere. The markets should have seperate regulatory divisions, but they all should be coming to the same decisons at about the same time. Archipelago clearly didn't do a good investigation here... that's the question that needs further investigation.
There's no way to tell that the first errant transaction is in fact errant. The market computer systems don't comprehend business news... a stock deserves to crash if bad news about that company's future has just come out. If that was in fact the case, those trades would have been perfectly valid.
Computers can't understand business news, so it's always going to take human spotters to notice a stock that is moving despite the lack of apparent news. Those humans need time to act, and that's why they buy time by freezing the affected stock and reserving the right to undo the trades just before the freeze.
Actually, Archipelago's the one to blame if you're gonna blame an exchange. Archipelago released the hold on the stock first, so most of the people who thought they were making an instant-profit by buying when it was low and selling minutes later turned out to be the instant losers. Archipelago's actions seemed to indicate the morning trades were going to stick. When the NASDAQ released their hold, they did so with a warning that anybody who had bought low in the morning should stand by because it was likely their trades were gonna be undone, and within the hour the NASDAQ followed through with the cancelations.
So, sorry money hungry lawyers... you'll just have to settle for suing a.com-like stock market out of existance, NASDAQ's hands are clean...
The system actually seemed to have worked pretty well except for the actions of th Archipelago market. There's no way to prevent errant data from making its way to the financial markets, so the question is what are you gonna do about it once it gets there?
What's supposed to happen is that everyone is supposed to stop trade in the stock while market officials try to sort out what happened. The NASDAQ did just that, and called the company involved to see if they had any news that would have justified the drop and they responded that there was no news. NASDAQ announced that their initial review indicated that there was errant trading going on, reserved the right to cancel the trades made before the halt, and released the stop. Within the hour, they confirmed the source of the problem, and revesed the errant trades.
Yet, while trading was still halted on NASDAQ, Archipelago undid their halt without any announcement that anything was wrong. This is wrong on two levels... not only did it falsely convince other people that the drop was for real, but it also pressured NASDAQ's decision-makers to hurry up, otherwise NASDAQ would lose trading volume to Archipelago.
So, the blame for this mess really belongs at Archipelago... they seem to have done an investigation that resulted in a verdict of no error, where in 20/20 hindsight we know there was an error on the play. Did Archipelago conduct a flawed investigation, or did they conduct any investigation at all? This was a case of the market's self-policing rules falling apart rather than any computer program...
Slashdot Mirror
Even the dirt casts a shadow... zoom in tight enough and light it enough (notice that there's a bright light aimed at exactly that spot in any EZ-Pass lane?) and they can still figure it out, even if the OCR chokes and passes it to human review. Also, the humans can double-check against the make, model, and color of the car since that's always in the registry database too. If one's red and the other's blue, it becomes a whole lot easier to solve...
The tickets for the most important violations are issued in person... and accident reports are always always done in person. Better make sure the lookalike doesn't get in a crash... the real RIP will have airtight proof that their body and their car is unharmed.
You wouldn't know which unit to deactivate to get rid of people who don't pay their dues... and subbing in and out units every month would get quite pricy.
Besides, the spooks could just forget about the E-Z Pass ID and use the booth cameras that record every transaction, E-Z Pass or cash, anyway. Little harder to search that tape since OCR isn't perfect, but still possible to do it manually.
Every state that uses EZ-Pass will gladly provide you with an anti-static bag to keep your tag in when you don't want to use it.
But, the other issue is that the EZ-Pass is a very directional RFID system. You must be able to emit a sginal below the car to trigger it, and read that signal above the car. It'd be nearly impossible to set up such a system secretly...
EZ-Pass in fact requires cameras on all EZ-Pass lanes. If a car going through the lane fails to identify itself to EZ-Pass and the plates aren't registered in the system, a violator's toll and penalty is on the way. However, if its just that your transponder has warn out, your plate is matched to your account, and when you turn in your old transponder for a new one your account is adjusted back to charge you only the normal tolls.
The main Fast Lane (what we call EZ-Pass in MA) Center has an interesting entry-way design. Once you walk in the first double-doors you walk into a small lobby with two doors, one on each side. Signs direct tagholders go to the left where they are greeted with friendly and happy employees, people who have been given violation notices are directed to go to the right where the environment isn't quite as welcoming.
Also, this isn't truely RFID. You need to send quite the signal to make an E-Z Pass identify itself, and then quite the antenna above to catch the signal you generated. Therefore, nobody can really do so secretly, you'd need a structure the size of, uhm, a toll booth, if you were gonna try to mask it. :)
EZ-Pass stores only the data that's needed to bill you, and no matter what a court can always demand that be turned over if there's a good reason to.
The non-toll sensors mentioned in the article are intentionally designed not to identify users, just to allow the Thruway authority to track the average speeds on the road. The state authorities really don't have much incentive to write speeding tickets for reasons reasons other than safety in New York State, because the fines are payable to the city or town in which the ticket was written, even if by a state cop. For that reason any "You couldn't get from Point A to Point B that fast!" ticket in NYS would have the instant problem of all the mayors from A to B fighting over who deserves the money.
If your anti-static bag is not available, store it in your tin-foil hat. Same effect.
"this will hopefully help the development of... ways to communicate over long distances without being eavesdropped on"
We already have that. Light based fiber runs are impossible to tap into without having to break the connectivity to hook up an additional device. Of course, nothing goes coast-to-coast directly, so they're plenty of chances for the spooks to install their logging equipment at a switching station or router.
The only way to communicate securely without encryption is to totally control physical access to the line, which just plain isn't gonna happen over long distances.
One issue that TiVo may have with users downloading the images is that if you ever put a Brand X image into a a Brand Y TiVo, it's going to give the appearance of working, but the software version will not match the most current release number for the Brand Y model. During the daily call, the device will then try to download the most current release of Brand Y software, only to fail because Brand Y software can't be installed over Brand X software. TiVo ends up having to pay through the for long modem calls until the mistake is noticed and the user is forced to install proper software. TiVo's fine with user hacks that don't threaten them, but having the images "out there" gives users a path to hacks gone wrong.
TiVo's most likely letting the commerical vendors continue to distribute the software because they're smart enough to ask users what brand of TiVo they're using, and only ship the matching release of software for their machine.
The RIAA can't change business models. Because, the recording industry is who they are, and the winners of any new business model will be "somebody else", some form of interest who isn't a member of and will never join the RIAA.
So, the only tactic the RIAA has left is "It's the law, deal with it!" so no wonder they're turning to law enforcement for somebody who doesn't care how bad the PR gets...
And that's where Buckles' reputation of charging through no matter what the reaction is going to be is key. He's basically from the "zero-tolerance" camp where the punishment is doled out, and any resistance is seen as an authorization to use more force.
Guess now instead of sending federal agents he'll be sending attack lawyers...
Statutory rape is a crime defined by the state law in all 50 states... but the ATF doesn't enforce state laws, that's the job state and local police.
And that's where the trivial nature of the gun charges come in. It's questionable why Buckles saw fit for his agency to be involved in the situation. No doubt that Koresh deserved to be busted, but the most serious charges against him were not on the ATF's beat. Storm first, ask questions later... perfect qualifications for working for the RIAA?
Try triggering on a shelf and you'll get readings from a few thousand books, and still not be accurate enough to tell you if a book is in exactly the right place. A book placed on a shelf that's three spots higher than it belongs is still a lost book that might take years to notice, and result in frustrated attempted borrowers not knowing where to start their search...
Yes, but one of the greatest problems in large libraries is when a checked-in book gets placed on a shelf other than the one it belongs on. A needle in the haystack situation results.
Robot book-searchers means that the stacks can be nearly completely closed to human access, since a failed robot delivery is far more likely to result in a book being placed out of bounds where it will stand out than neatly placed in the wrong pile, and even then the discrepancy would soon be discovered when the robot discovers n+1 books in a pile the computer records say it should only be finding n books.
They might not be cheaper, but they certainly would be more accurate and dramatically cut the risk of books being lost within a library.
Hardware firewalls cost money, and software firewalls have to rely on the operating system beneath them to be uncorrupted.
This is a solution that can be made out of spare PC parts, and is lightweight enough to work just fine on last generation's equipment. Any true geek likely has enough spare parts lying around in their basement from retired machines to build this.
Why does SmoothWall insist on being alone on the machine? Because the firewall is supposed to be absolutely stable, so there's no business for any other application to be mucking around. At worst, letting a user run other software could allow for the possiblity of the user being tricked into running software that undermines the firewall. It's newsworthy that SmoothWall is advancing on their Linux kernel selection, they don't do so very often because they don't often need the new OS features, and the last thing they want is to be discovering new bugs on a firewall.
Basically, this is turning a nearly-useless PC into a hardware firewall...
Maybe a whole company. Archipelago now has a lot of explaining to do about their regulatory practices. The stock market system depends on self-regulation by the exchanges, and this newcomer got caught making a very questionable early decloration that things were all clear, while NASDAQ took longer but got made the right call. Archipelago then got reduced to copying off of NASDAQ's homework, and leaving some of its own customers holding the bag.
Here's the problem with your timeline. At 11:19 AM, trading didn't restart at NASDAQ. It restarted at Archipelago. When trading re-started as NASDAQ, there was a simultanious warning that it was likely the pre-stoppage trades would be reversed.
Sure, there was out of line behavior, but it happened at Archipelago... who is a completely different operation. The moral of the story is to trust NASDAQ for a fairly played market, and beware of Archipelago opening trading too soon on stocks that should remain halted.
But if you do that, the software developer then declares bankruptcy... now who's holding the bag?
Acrhipelago reversed all of its pre-stopage trades of the stock in question too. RTFA.
However, Archipelago was the first to make the decision to resume trading, so most of the people who got burned did so there. NASDAQ then was caught in a no-mans-land of decision making... their investigation hadn't yet returned an explanation, but Archipelago's actions indicated that they had already made a decision that the trades were going to stick. For a trading halt to be effective, there has to be a trading halt everywhere. The markets should have seperate regulatory divisions, but they all should be coming to the same decisons at about the same time. Archipelago clearly didn't do a good investigation here... that's the question that needs further investigation.
There's no way to tell that the first errant transaction is in fact errant. The market computer systems don't comprehend business news... a stock deserves to crash if bad news about that company's future has just come out. If that was in fact the case, those trades would have been perfectly valid.
Computers can't understand business news, so it's always going to take human spotters to notice a stock that is moving despite the lack of apparent news. Those humans need time to act, and that's why they buy time by freezing the affected stock and reserving the right to undo the trades just before the freeze.
Actually, Archipelago's the one to blame if you're gonna blame an exchange. Archipelago released the hold on the stock first, so most of the people who thought they were making an instant-profit by buying when it was low and selling minutes later turned out to be the instant losers. Archipelago's actions seemed to indicate the morning trades were going to stick. When the NASDAQ released their hold, they did so with a warning that anybody who had bought low in the morning should stand by because it was likely their trades were gonna be undone, and within the hour the NASDAQ followed through with the cancelations.
.com-like stock market out of existance, NASDAQ's hands are clean...
So, sorry money hungry lawyers... you'll just have to settle for suing a
The system actually seemed to have worked pretty well except for the actions of th Archipelago market. There's no way to prevent errant data from making its way to the financial markets, so the question is what are you gonna do about it once it gets there?
What's supposed to happen is that everyone is supposed to stop trade in the stock while market officials try to sort out what happened. The NASDAQ did just that, and called the company involved to see if they had any news that would have justified the drop and they responded that there was no news. NASDAQ announced that their initial review indicated that there was errant trading going on, reserved the right to cancel the trades made before the halt, and released the stop. Within the hour, they confirmed the source of the problem, and revesed the errant trades.
Yet, while trading was still halted on NASDAQ, Archipelago undid their halt without any announcement that anything was wrong. This is wrong on two levels... not only did it falsely convince other people that the drop was for real, but it also pressured NASDAQ's decision-makers to hurry up, otherwise NASDAQ would lose trading volume to Archipelago.
So, the blame for this mess really belongs at Archipelago... they seem to have done an investigation that resulted in a verdict of no error, where in 20/20 hindsight we know there was an error on the play. Did Archipelago conduct a flawed investigation, or did they conduct any investigation at all? This was a case of the market's self-policing rules falling apart rather than any computer program...
Even open source software is at risk to GIGO flaws. Garbage data in, garbage data out...