I suspect that what happens then is that they use the "less-lethal" tool first - anyone left standing, or with shiny foil face masks are then categorised as "combatants" and "more-lethal" tools are then used.
The trick will be to incorporate the foil into some unobtusive clothing, dress up like a woman in head-to-toe covering (otherwise it will look strange if you are in full head covering). Or maybe a member of the Klan with some sun-glasses on. That'd be unobtrusive (not). Any kind of full body covering will do. Cow costume..., Scuba gear, ummm....
Of course the fact that you are not running away screaming might still be a bit of a clue.
Probably won't do much for improvised explosives though.
...which reminds me, I must remember to wrap my passport in foil..
Isn't this a situation where forcing double entry of the value could of least be of some use?
Having a "press enter to confirm" tends to be useless as people are conditioned into quickly pressing enter (or clicking confirm or whatever).
When writing systems that delete records en mass, I usually display a count, and ask the user to enter in the count - that way they at least have to look at the count.
Eg, You wish to delete 2,432,495 rows of data. To continue, enter the number of rows:.....
Although the incredibly vast overwhelming number of incursions are probably "opps not paying enough attention to where I'm flying" type incidents (which is scary enough as it is) -
Isn't part of the idea behind scambling to warn them to get out - AND ALSO - if need be to actually escort them out, follow them, establish visual communication and identification.
I think that this is probably a worthwhile idea.
However, putting on the paranoid terrorism / security tin foil had Although isn't there also a part of the scramble jets which is the "just in case this is someone with a grudge to vent" won't this create a situation in which the fighters will now be scamble even later (eg, give the craft another 60 seconds to change course before scrambling), and also result in a situation where there will actually be less attention paid to the restricted areas?
I'd agree that there are opportunities for improvment, however I certinairly wasn't outlining the entire security approaches that online australian banks use.
As well as the 48 hour practice, the organisation I use also uses RSA SecurID(tm) for one time passwords (though you can choose not to use them, and have a reduced transfer limit), and limits the the total amounts that can be transferred.
Imagine the following scenario: your host wants to protect your data from any malicious transactions, therefore any changes made, only take affect after 48h's....I would be pretty pissed off, and would ditch any ISP believing such to be an advisable approach to security.
Given that the delay only applies in a targetted area (interbank transfers on the first time), its probably a useful approach - you can still transfer money on a shorter timeframe to accounts you have established transfer histories with, and there is no delay on transfers between your own accounts, or through using vetted bill payment services.
I don't really think that comparing the delay to ISP's allowing data updates is a valid comparison - it depends on how critical the data is - perhaps you would prefer to have a 48 hour holding period on domain transfers, where rollback is available - it would have been extremely useful for Panix getting their domain hijacked.
Also, a lot of large organisations internally use similar delay periods through change control processes to help ensure that only authenticated and approved changes occur to their systems.
Cheers,
Ths usual tradoffs between usability, flexibility and security apply Boris.
Here in Australia, one of my financial institutions have recently changed their transfer policies so that transfers to a new destination (ie, one that you have not already transferred to) are "held" for 48 hours before the transfer completes (compared to overnight for regular transfers).
I believe that this is to facilitate a few things, such as:
* Easier to rollback "Oops, Wrong Account Number" problems.
* Easier to prevent the channelling of money to accounts from pishing victims (rough guess, if destination account is receiving several transfers in 24 hours, then raise red flag).
Of course, the cynical side of me thinks that its just an excuse for the bank to use the money on the short term money market for an extra 24 hours.;)
If the govt found you sending plain text explanations of your terrorist plans, would they take it seriously or pass you off as a nut who's too incompetent to hide themselves?
Irrespective of the truth, they would probably treat you as an ideal candidate for a PR exercise in convincing the masses that the threat is real...
Its not the PC that useful, its the $100
on
The Hundred-Buck PC
·
· Score: 1
I don't think the plan is to give the computers to the third world.
I think the plan is for these things to be sold in 1st world countries, where millions of them would be sold.
I think that the third world benefits because they probably want to make them by exploiting / employing 3rd world labour.
1 - Cheap PC Sell Lots
2 - Build Money Goes To 3rd World
3 - Profit! (For at least the capitalists.
I'm surprised that anyone is still trying to sell "solutions".
I thought that the big sell these days - especially with the growth in outsourcing - is to sell "outcomes".
You don't provide ERP Solutions (an input), you provide cost effective timely financial reporting (an outcome).
You don't provide Printing Solutions (the service consumed), you provide Flexible High Reliability Content Production (the outcome).
You don't sell mobile phone solutions, you sell happier existences....
And besides, its much easier to sell the outcome, rather than the input. The magic is to convince people that the outcome will be achieved given the input.
Although I can see how that could be the impression, actually its more along the lines of: there is a difference between the rights of civilians and police, so does this difference mean should there be some oversight?
Although as another pointed out, the actual charge was probably unrelated to the GPS, and more along the lines of violating a restraining order.
It may be that the actual charge wasn't relating to the GPS device - it could well have been for violating the restraining order. The article isn't very specific, and wouldn't be the first time for a bit of "summary"/"assumption"/"approximation" to occur.
Cheers
Boris.
In the article, there are two situations (there are more, but for now, I'll mention two of them).
1 - Police Don't Need Warrant To Use This
2 - In Colorado, a man was convicted for tracking his (soon to be ex) wife using one of these.
Call me a bit strange, however, if an ordinary person can be charged (and convicted) for doing this, then really doesn't that suggest that there needs to be some form of judical oversight when the police do it?
I'm genuinely curious as to what they mean by a two-way mirror. I'm hoping its a mistake, because to me, a two way mirror is either a plain pane of glass, or just a normal mirror, with another normal mirror on the otherside...
I suspect that the reason for the "driver image flipping" is for use with projectors.
Some projectors don't support flipping for rear-projection, or for "upside down roof mounted" situations. Or in some cases, its easier to change your own laptop, than to mess around with someone elses projector (assuming you even have access to the controls on it).
Cheers,
Boris.
True, it is likely that this will start forcing spammers overseas, though this in and of itself is a good thing:
* Microsoft are also in a lot of 3rd world countries, and also has funds, clout and is easier for a government to negotiate with rather than dozens of different spammers.
* If they all go to some third world country with little economic output, then it would be possible to blacklist all email from that country - in this case it is likely that exclusion from international communications would also spur them to act.
I would think though that the Address is not really required for identifying which locations have higher numbers of people going to colleges.
After all, if this is tracking student movement, all you need to do is track it by the feeder schools, which will show what areas the students came from - which is what they are trying to figure out. And even if they wanted to track it specificly by smaller geographies (and to handle out of area students) all you need is a post/zip code - not an address.
The address is more likely to be required for administrative reasons - ie, trying to contact students to see where they have gone after school, that kind of thing.
Or in the aluminium-foil-hat mode, all they really want the address for is to pass on to other organisations like, spooky folk (yes, I mean loan companies and marketing firms), and government departments/agencies.
Until they buy out the registration of G-Force and replace it with Google Force, the latest anime series about a funky spaceship, a crew of slightly demented do-gooders battling the ongoing evil-guy.
I wonder if perhaps the banks need to set up their own "phishing" process.
Email their own members, redirect them to the wrong web site, which looks real - and once they login, give them a stern looking warning and a lecture on Phishing.
And if they get sucked in two or three times, revoke their account privliges.
It would be annoying - but eventually I suspect that banks will have to take more proactive measures to educate their customers.
I agree that the physics and design of the PBR make them very very safe.
You need to remember though, that there is still the issue of the quality of the implementation, and its conformance to the original design - so that the physics principles that make it safe are correctly maintained.
I am not even remotely a scientist or physicist, however, I wonder what would happen would happen if the pebbles had manufacturing flaws:
* Excessive uranium inside a pebble.
* Undetected flaws in ceramic pebbles.
Or other scenarios such as using pebbles for dirty bombs, and ongoing long term storage of waste products.
I am looking forward to the introduction of these as I believe that nuclear is generally the best option for baseload power supply (again, I just read a lot, and have minimal science education).
But I don't want to ignore that design and implementation are very different things - and since they are still human processes, are subject to corruption and incompetence. China still has problems with corroption (I was watching a documentary on the occaisional massive flooding in china, where some levies collapsed because the constructors skimped on the job and didn't put reinforcement in the concrete - flood levies - in a flood prone area...).
There have been allegations of corruption in nuclear energy in the US - even despite its high amount of regulation.
So, then we have to think about - not only do we trust the physics of it (I do) - do we also trust the designers, the builders, the suppliers, the company operators, the regulators, etc..
Particlarly not surprising - especially since the political parties already do this - irresepective of your membership, they try and track your voting preferences - remember that political parties generally exempt themselves from any privacy related legislation as well.
This message applies to Australia, which is also currently in Election mode - however I would expect the US system to show the same excesses and dubious ethical reasoning.
Feedback or Electrac is installed on MPs' and candidates' computers, with information collected about constituents sent to a centralised database at each party's secretariat. Its main purpose is to collate personal information about voting preferences and issues for political campaigning,
and remember, that:
Attorney-General Philip Ruddock defended exemptions that legally allowed their compilation. Based on the electronic version of the Australian electoral roll, using taxpayer-funded resources and skirting around exemptions to the Privacy Act, which they voted for, the Coalition and ALP have entrenched their respective Feedback (Liberal) and Electrac (ALP) databases with little public scrutiny or knowledge.
They could allow POP3 and still have ads - just change the POP3 processing so that POP3 messages have the ads inserted in the email. Yahoo already do this with messages through its email list service.
which also features a form for sending him (his office staff) a message.
Although perhaps I should have thought about this before posting to/. - given the close relationship between John Howard and George W Bush, I may well find myself on a do not fly list next time I'm in the USA!.
Irrespective of your political beliefs (which have left out deliberately) spam is spam is spam is annoying.
And I'd like to extend the thought of minimum bumper heights to headlights as well - its a serious risk - especially in country driving when vehicles with high mounted lights are driving along - especially when loaded (eg returning from snow.
I'd like to see all vehicles with lights over a certain height have to have autolevelers (like HID equipped vehicles) - that way the lights can stay safe for other vehicles on the road.
Because from just reading the articles, I have no desire to add to a slashdotting of the victim of this problem, and the (probable) slashdotting and bandwidth bill it is likely to result in.
What I find interesting is that many service stations where I live (Australia) used to offer pay-at-the-pump via credit and debit cards - of which I was a huge fan.
None do anymore.
And I suspect that the reason why is that most service stations (so rumour has it) don't make any money on petrol - they make their money from impulse and other purchases inside the service station shopes (coke, drinks, firewood, newspapers).
Of course if you let people pay at the pump - there go the impulse purchases and hence the profit. Its really annoying - REALLY ANNOYING - if I want to buy a drink, I could've still gone inside and bought a drink and paid, or if not I could quickly fill up, pay, and let the next person into get petrol.
Slashdot Mirror
The trick will be to incorporate the foil into some unobtusive clothing, dress up like a woman in head-to-toe covering (otherwise it will look strange if you are in full head covering). Or maybe a member of the Klan with some sun-glasses on. That'd be unobtrusive (not). Any kind of full body covering will do. Cow costume..., Scuba gear, ummm....
Of course the fact that you are not running away screaming might still be a bit of a clue.
Probably won't do much for improvised explosives though.
Eg, You wish to delete 2,432,495 rows of data. To continue, enter the number of rows:.....
Boris.
Isn't part of the idea behind scambling to warn them to get out - AND ALSO - if need be to actually escort them out, follow them, establish visual communication and identification.
I think that this is probably a worthwhile idea.
However, putting on the paranoid terrorism / security tin foil had Although isn't there also a part of the scramble jets which is the "just in case this is someone with a grudge to vent" won't this create a situation in which the fighters will now be scamble even later (eg, give the craft another 60 seconds to change course before scrambling), and also result in a situation where there will actually be less attention paid to the restricted areas?
As well as the 48 hour practice, the organisation I use also uses RSA SecurID(tm) for one time passwords (though you can choose not to use them, and have a reduced transfer limit), and limits the the total amounts that can be transferred.
Given that the delay only applies in a targetted area (interbank transfers on the first time), its probably a useful approach - you can still transfer money on a shorter timeframe to accounts you have established transfer histories with, and there is no delay on transfers between your own accounts, or through using vetted bill payment services.I don't really think that comparing the delay to ISP's allowing data updates is a valid comparison - it depends on how critical the data is - perhaps you would prefer to have a 48 hour holding period on domain transfers, where rollback is available - it would have been extremely useful for Panix getting their domain hijacked. Also, a lot of large organisations internally use similar delay periods through change control processes to help ensure that only authenticated and approved changes occur to their systems.
Cheers,
Ths usual tradoffs between usability, flexibility and security apply
Boris.
I believe that this is to facilitate a few things, such as:
* Easier to rollback "Oops, Wrong Account Number" problems.
* Easier to prevent the channelling of money to accounts from pishing victims (rough guess, if destination account is receiving several transfers in 24 hours, then raise red flag).
Of course, the cynical side of me thinks that its just an excuse for the bank to use the money on the short term money market for an extra 24 hours. ;)
Boris.
Irrespective of the truth, they would probably treat you as an ideal candidate for a PR exercise in convincing the masses that the threat is real...
I think the plan is for these things to be sold in 1st world countries, where millions of them would be sold.
I think that the third world benefits because they probably want to make them by exploiting / employing 3rd world labour.
1 - Cheap PC Sell Lots 2 - Build Money Goes To 3rd World 3 - Profit! (For at least the capitalists.
I thought that the big sell these days - especially with the growth in outsourcing - is to sell "outcomes".
You don't provide ERP Solutions (an input), you provide cost effective timely financial reporting (an outcome).
You don't provide Printing Solutions (the service consumed), you provide Flexible High Reliability Content Production (the outcome).
You don't sell mobile phone solutions, you sell happier existences....
And besides, its much easier to sell the outcome, rather than the input. The magic is to convince people that the outcome will be achieved given the input.
Boris.
Although as another pointed out, the actual charge was probably unrelated to the GPS, and more along the lines of violating a restraining order.
Cheers,
Boris.
It may be that the actual charge wasn't relating to the GPS device - it could well have been for violating the restraining order. The article isn't very specific, and wouldn't be the first time for a bit of "summary"/"assumption"/"approximation" to occur.
Cheers
Boris.
1 - Police Don't Need Warrant To Use This
2 - In Colorado, a man was convicted for tracking his (soon to be ex) wife using one of these.
Call me a bit strange, however, if an ordinary person can be charged (and convicted) for doing this, then really doesn't that suggest that there needs to be some form of judical oversight when the police do it?
Boris.
Disclaimer - I'm not even in the US.
Many Thanks.
Boris (Hopefully not being looked at through a two way mirror).
I'm genuinely curious as to what they mean by a two-way mirror. I'm hoping its a mistake, because to me, a two way mirror is either a plain pane of glass, or just a normal mirror, with another normal mirror on the otherside...
I suspect that the reason for the "driver image flipping" is for use with projectors. Some projectors don't support flipping for rear-projection, or for "upside down roof mounted" situations. Or in some cases, its easier to change your own laptop, than to mess around with someone elses projector (assuming you even have access to the controls on it). Cheers, Boris.
* Microsoft are also in a lot of 3rd world countries, and also has funds, clout and is easier for a government to negotiate with rather than dozens of different spammers.
* If they all go to some third world country with little economic output, then it would be possible to blacklist all email from that country - in this case it is likely that exclusion from international communications would also spur them to act.
After all, if this is tracking student movement, all you need to do is track it by the feeder schools, which will show what areas the students came from - which is what they are trying to figure out. And even if they wanted to track it specificly by smaller geographies (and to handle out of area students) all you need is a post/zip code - not an address.
The address is more likely to be required for administrative reasons - ie, trying to contact students to see where they have gone after school, that kind of thing.
Or in the aluminium-foil-hat mode, all they really want the address for is to pass on to other organisations like, spooky folk (yes, I mean loan companies and marketing firms), and government departments/agencies.
Until they buy out the registration of G-Force and replace it with Google Force, the latest anime series about a funky spaceship, a crew of slightly demented do-gooders battling the ongoing evil-guy.
Email their own members, redirect them to the wrong web site, which looks real - and once they login, give them a stern looking warning and a lecture on Phishing.
And if they get sucked in two or three times, revoke their account privliges.
It would be annoying - but eventually I suspect that banks will have to take more proactive measures to educate their customers.
You need to remember though, that there is still the issue of the quality of the implementation, and its conformance to the original design - so that the physics principles that make it safe are correctly maintained.
I am not even remotely a scientist or physicist, however, I wonder what would happen would happen if the pebbles had manufacturing flaws:
* Excessive uranium inside a pebble.
* Undetected flaws in ceramic pebbles.
Or other scenarios such as using pebbles for dirty bombs, and ongoing long term storage of waste products.
I am looking forward to the introduction of these as I believe that nuclear is generally the best option for baseload power supply (again, I just read a lot, and have minimal science education).
But I don't want to ignore that design and implementation are very different things - and since they are still human processes, are subject to corruption and incompetence. China still has problems with corroption (I was watching a documentary on the occaisional massive flooding in china, where some levies collapsed because the constructors skimped on the job and didn't put reinforcement in the concrete - flood levies - in a flood prone area...).
There have been allegations of corruption in nuclear energy in the US - even despite its high amount of regulation.
So, then we have to think about - not only do we trust the physics of it (I do) - do we also trust the designers, the builders, the suppliers, the company operators, the regulators, etc..
Cheers.
Boris.
This message applies to Australia, which is also currently in Election mode - however I would expect the US system to show the same excesses and dubious ethical reasoning.
For example, as reported in The Australian
and remember, that:
They could allow POP3 and still have ads - just change the POP3 processing so that POP3 messages have the ads inserted in the email. Yahoo already do this with messages through its email list service.
which also features a form for sending him (his office staff) a message.
Although perhaps I should have thought about this before posting to /. - given the close relationship between John Howard and George W Bush, I may well find myself on a do not fly list next time I'm in the USA!.
Irrespective of your political beliefs (which have left out deliberately) spam is spam is spam is annoying.
Cheers,
Boricle.
I'd like to see all vehicles with lights over a certain height have to have autolevelers (like HID equipped vehicles) - that way the lights can stay safe for other vehicles on the road.
Give some thought to it also, or use the internet archive (wayback) - its not quite so up to date, but the pictures are cached too - http://web.archive.org/web/20030621113550/http://w ww.katie.com/
None do anymore.
And I suspect that the reason why is that most service stations (so rumour has it) don't make any money on petrol - they make their money from impulse and other purchases inside the service station shopes (coke, drinks, firewood, newspapers).
Of course if you let people pay at the pump - there go the impulse purchases and hence the profit. Its really annoying - REALLY ANNOYING - if I want to buy a drink, I could've still gone inside and bought a drink and paid, or if not I could quickly fill up, pay, and let the next person into get petrol.
Oh well. Life as a proscribed consumer.