I'm all for the FTC/government cracking down on behavioural tracking, but how would such a system work and how could it even be policed?
In the case of the Do-Not-Call system:
Individuals must register their telephone number with the government (in Australia, at least, you have to repeat this registration every 12 months)
The government then exports the list to the advertisers/marketers on a regular basis.
Advertisers/marketers are expected to integrate the list with their systems and honour its content.
If advertisers/marketers call a number on the Do-Not-Call list it's still up to the individual to complain to the government about it, and the government is expected to pounce on the advertiser/marketer if the number was registered more than 30 days ago.
How would such a system translate to the web? (And I say the web as opposed to the internet as a whole, since the web seems to be where the battlefront is at the moment.)
Possiblities:
Individuals have to register their IP addresses: fails because of dynamic IP address assignment at most ISP's.
Individuals have to create a special Cookie: fails because Cookies are only sent to their origin domain - you can't set one for *.com, *.edu, etc.
Special "X-Do-Not-Track: Yes" HTTP header: this could work but may be stripped by certain proxy servers enroute, rendering it useless. All browsers would have to be updated to include a UI preference that turns this on and off as well.
What about enforcement? How can you tell if someone is tracking you? How can you provably report it to the government so that they can do something about it?
Unfortunately it sounds like a bit of a pipe dream to me.
The fact that Australia has politicians who are even willing to test the waters by floating such ideas says a lot by itself.
Far be it for me to defend politicians, but this little bit of "policy" as you'd like to call it has come from a not-for-profit group that pretty much amounts to a "Club for Pedestrians".
The Pedestrian Council of Australia is a non-profit organisation whose objectives are: the continuing improvement of the safety, amenity, access, health and environment of all pedestrians throughout Australia.
DEATH by iPod is being blamed as a contributing factor to the 25 per cent rise in the number of pedestrian fatalities in NSW.
Here I was thinking it was all the bad drivers from Victoria moving up to NSW and Queensland. All this time it was the hordes of iPod Zombie Pedestrians.
If you're worried about your laptop keyboard (I would be) plug in an external one and then let him go crazy with this:
Baby smash! As babies smash on the keyboard, colored shapes, letters and numbers appear on the screen. Baby Smash will lock out the Windows Key, as well as Ctrl-Esc and Alt-Tab so your baby can't get out of the application. Pressing ALT-F4 will exit the application and Shift-Ctrl-Alt-O brings up the options dialog.
Their employer has every right to monitor and record (including keystrokes) everything they do. Why would Google be any different?
The main difference is in the money.
Employers generally aren't paying people to surf the net because productivity goes down the drain costs them money. Google on the other hand stands to make money by building a psychological profile of everything you do on the net to sell advertising based on every link you click, every page you read and apparently every mouse move you make.
Customer: I bought this Sony Car because it had headlights. I need headlights so I can drive my car at night.
Sony: We removed the headlights feature at your last service because headlights can be used to flash oncoming drivers. But removing headlights has made your Car lighter, so it can go faster and use less fuel. We hope you like the changes.
Customer: I can't use my Car any more because you took the headlights away, thus it's no longer roadworthy and it would be illegal for me to drive it. Give me back my headlights, and pay $800 for the rental car I've had to use in the meantime.
From a pure cost standpoint the industry wouldn't want upgrade their CVR's.
It's because of the industry's very "want" to not upgrade that upgrades have been mandated by the FAA in the past on at least three occasions:
Generation 1 Foil-based FDRs (Flight Data Recorders) were found to be not functioning in 48% of accidents, so the FAA enforced the replacement of foil recorders with digital equivalents by May 1989.
Another upgrade of digital FDRs was forced by May 1994, increasing the minimum number of recorded channels by five.
By July 16, 1996 all airplanes manufacturer before October 11, 1991 had to have an FDAU/FDR combo capable of recording at least 22 parameter groups. (Airplanes manufactured after Oct 11 1991 had to record 34 parameter groups.)
A pager-size black box was strapped to my sockless ankle, and another, somewhat larger unit dangled in a holster on my belt. Together, the two items make up a tracking device called the BI ExacuTrack AT: the former is designed to be tamper-resistant, and the latter broadcasts the wearer’s location to a monitoring company via GPS.
So, the author watches too many TV shows and movies and believes the crap he sees, hmm? The device figures out its location using GPS, it transmits its location using some other means, like 3G data.
The process you're describing is called "binning" and is used extensively in astrophotography.
It should be mathematically equivalent, but you're almost always better using a lower resolution sensor because it has larger wells for photon gathering and is less affected by readout noise.
Binning doesn't improve the dynamic range of an image - that it restricted by the number of bits used in the ADC that the CMOS/CCD sensor pixels get clocked out to. Having a 2x2 bin (4 pixels) gives you four times the range of a single pixel (e.g.: 0-1023 instead of 0-255) but also gives you four times the sensor noise, so it's a no-win.
Attacker can sign their own version of the libraries and just ensure they appear in the DLL path before the official libraries (such as the application's own directory).
Code signing relies on PKI, and keys expire. Applications can't check for a particular signature because the keys used for code signing change over time. (NOTE: You can code sign things with multiple keys, including expired keys that were previously valid, but people rarely do this and almost never do it properly.)
The EXE loader could check signatures on DLLs before giving apps access to them (through LoadLibrary() or whatever), but would need to have a central registry of Allowed Keys to be of any use. Anything a 3rd party developer can call to add their own DLL keys to this Allowed Key registry can be compromised by attackers, too.
I'm a linux user, but I'm yet to come across a linux distribution where I can plug in a Canon Pixma printer and actually print directly onto a DVD/CD without having to f-around with something first. It shouldn't be that hard. At one stage I even *bought* TurboPrint drivers for linux so I could do simple things like edge-to-edge printing. Or duplexing. It shouldn't be that hard.
And since you brought up GIMP... my complaint with GIMP isn't CMYK support, it's the lack of full 16-bit per channel support. 8-bit channel support is worthless for anything other than basic photo retouching. I do astrometric image processing and I need to run things like IRIS, Stacker and Photoshop under WINE if I want that.
Methylphenidate (Ritalin) was first synthesised in 1944. It was identified as a stimulant in 1954, and has been used to treat children with ADHD or ADD, known at the time as hyperactivity or minimal brain dysfunction (MBD) since the 1960's.
Slashdot Mirror
Wasn't the first HDR video camera back in 1993? Granted, they called it Adaptive Sensitivity back then.
[on OWA] It even degrades nicely for older browsers.
I wish it downgraded nicely for newer browsers, too.
I'm all for the FTC/government cracking down on behavioural tracking, but how would such a system work and how could it even be policed?
In the case of the Do-Not-Call system:
How would such a system translate to the web? (And I say the web as opposed to the internet as a whole, since the web seems to be where the battlefront is at the moment.)
Possiblities:
What about enforcement? How can you tell if someone is tracking you? How can you provably report it to the government so that they can do something about it?
Unfortunately it sounds like a bit of a pipe dream to me.
If you look at the image more carefully you can see four props (two pairs of contra-rotating three-blade props).
An engine (or motor) is a machine designed to convert energy into useful mechanical motion.
I'd say an electric motor qualifies as an engine.
Far be it for me to defend politicians, but this little bit of "policy" as you'd like to call it has come from a not-for-profit group that pretty much amounts to a "Club for Pedestrians".
To wit:
Here I was thinking it was all the bad drivers from Victoria moving up to NSW and Queensland. All this time it was the hordes of iPod Zombie Pedestrians.
As babies smash on the keyboard, colored shapes, letters and numbers appear on the screen. Baby Smash will lock out the Windows Key, as well as Ctrl-Esc and Alt-Tab so your baby can't get out of the application. Pressing ALT-F4 will exit the application and Shift-Ctrl-Alt-O brings up the options dialog.
The main difference is in the money.
Employers generally aren't paying people to surf the net because productivity goes down the drain costs them money. Google on the other hand stands to make money by building a psychological profile of everything you do on the net to sell advertising based on every link you click, every page you read and apparently every mouse move you make.
Yes please, I'd like to see Herzog Zwei (Two Dukes) from the Sega Megadrive/Genesis.
Customer: I bought this Sony Car because it had headlights. I need headlights so I can drive my car at night.
Sony: We removed the headlights feature at your last service because headlights can be used to flash oncoming drivers. But removing headlights has made your Car lighter, so it can go faster and use less fuel. We hope you like the changes.
Customer: I can't use my Car any more because you took the headlights away, thus it's no longer roadworthy and it would be illegal for me to drive it. Give me back my headlights, and pay $800 for the rental car I've had to use in the meantime.
Sony: No.
Judge: No.
Rest of the world: Dumb-asses.
Ah, I suck. You said CVRs and I rabbited on about FDRs. Where's my damned coffee?
It's because of the industry's very "want" to not upgrade that upgrades have been mandated by the FAA in the past on at least three occasions:
So, the author watches too many TV shows and movies and believes the crap he sees, hmm? The device figures out its location using GPS, it transmits its location using some other means, like 3G data.
US$155,000, the cheapest one, for 33 seconds flight time?
How about US$139,000 for one hour? http://jetlev.com/Pages/tech.html
Sure, it's gotta be over water, but it runs on four-stroke engine with ordinary petrol and you get ONE HOUR!
100 percent is more than 40 percent, therefore, the internet.
Yes, it's called the internet.
The process you're describing is called "binning" and is used extensively in astrophotography.
It should be mathematically equivalent, but you're almost always better using a lower resolution sensor because it has larger wells for photon gathering and is less affected by readout noise.
Binning doesn't improve the dynamic range of an image - that it restricted by the number of bits used in the ADC that the CMOS/CCD sensor pixels get clocked out to. Having a 2x2 bin (4 pixels) gives you four times the range of a single pixel (e.g.: 0-1023 instead of 0-255) but also gives you four times the sensor noise, so it's a no-win.
Yes, let's use rockets to make the earth spin slightly faster so it keeps up with UT. :)
Don't forget Nepal with its 15-minute offset (currently UTC+0545).
I noticed that too. An aggregation error? If you look at the top 70 (or so) sites at the bottom the two are listed as:
Yandex 7 sites have a combined reach of 2.65%
Yandex 2 sites have a combined reach of 2.42%
I'm a linux user, but I'm yet to come across a linux distribution where I can plug in a Canon Pixma printer and actually print directly onto a DVD/CD without having to f-around with something first. It shouldn't be that hard. At one stage I even *bought* TurboPrint drivers for linux so I could do simple things like edge-to-edge printing. Or duplexing. It shouldn't be that hard.
And since you brought up GIMP... my complaint with GIMP isn't CMYK support, it's the lack of full 16-bit per channel support. 8-bit channel support is worthless for anything other than basic photo retouching. I do astrometric image processing and I need to run things like IRIS, Stacker and Photoshop under WINE if I want that.
Methylphenidate (Ritalin) was first synthesised in 1944. It was identified as a stimulant in 1954, and has been used to treat children with ADHD or ADD, known at the time as hyperactivity or minimal brain dysfunction (MBD) since the 1960's.
What are the mods thinking today? Oh, this is /.