My company is currently centralizing all of its IT functions from the 42 Europe-wide sites it has. Knowledge management is a nightmare, as the institutional knowledge is spread too thin among the old timers to make any impact for the new people. We have some processes documented, but by far not all of them. We decided we needed a written repository of knowledge, as we are growin at a rate where we can not afford to waste time.
We finally decided on MediaWiki, just like some of the others here have suggested, for pretty much the same reasons. It is just great for unstructured information, and the ability to categorize and very quickly link to other pages has turned out to be very useful. It is very quick to update - no need to muck around with HTML and uploading a page. Just hit Edit, change that IP from 223 to 23, click Save and you're set.
Converting existing Word documents to wiki format is essential for quickly populating the wiki with content. We have a lot of support documents with screenshots. I found out that the best way to do that is to save the Word file as HTML. It will export the images both as JPEGs and PNGs. The PNG is the image as it was imported into Word, at its native resolution, while the JPEG is a result of how it has been processed within Word itself (cropped / framed / recolored). I generally just grab the PNGs, unless the cropping was significant, as the JPEG resolution is fairly low. As for the text, I just grab the plain text from the document and mark it up with wikicode. Fairly painless.
Additionally, I also found a nice tool for converting Excel tables into wikicode, for all those worksheets with server IPs, domain functions and other stuff. Save your Excel as CSV then fire up the converter at http://area23.brightbyte.de/csv2wp.php. Just copy-paste (or upload), and presto! You have a nice wiki table. You can then mark it up with colors and other bling-bling if required. Again, I found the process to be relatively fast and painless.
Keeping with the wiki way, the majority of our pages have unrestricted access. Since I'm not a great believer in security through obscurity, we needed something to protect sensitive information - mostly passwords. The privileged few that need to know can get bumped to a higher security level and access these restricted pages.
http://conseil-recherche-innovation.net/index.php/ 1974/04/10/31-restrict-pages-under-mediawiki is a good page on how to restrict certain pages in MediaWiki. There is only one level of restriction though - the page is either restricted, or it isn't. To my joy I also discovered that while restriced pages also get indexed for searching, they do not show up among the search results if the user is not on the restricted level himself.
By the way, I full agree with the parent - the wiki by itself is not enough, you do need a librarian / knowledge manager to categorize all the braindumps and also to educate people on its mere existence. I also found that you need to pour a certain amount of info into the wiki before it reaches critical mass and people start to really use it. You do need to work a lot on it, especially in the early stages, with importing content. We didn't bother with scope definitions and categories and stuff - since all of this is so easy to change once the data is up, we'll just build it as we go along.
Can the biometric data be hashed and the hash used for verification instead?
The company that I recently worked for makes and sells a fingerprinting system (aka AFIS or Automatic Fingerprint Identification System). It takes input from a fingerprint reader, which is really a special black and white digital camera with a fixed focus, something like this. The software identifies the X,Y coordinates of the specific areas of the fingerprint image, such bifurcations, ridges, furrows and stuff (maybe a fingerprinting expert can help me out here on the details).
The software creates a hash of the two dimensional relationship between the various X,Y coordinates. Here in Hungary if more than 19 of these points match up with a fingerprint taken at a crime scene, you go to jail. That is enough evidence for conviction. The software takes the coordinates of dozens of these areas of interest and can match even partial fingerprints (and palm prints) very quickly, since the search involves comparing short text strings, rather than multi-kilobyte images. As the software analyses spatial relationship rather than image data, it does not matter whether the partial fingerprint is rotated - the relationship between the points stays the same.
FYI, my right thumb's hash was 186 bytes long - that's 1488 bits. 2^1488 is 8.56 x 10^447 (if my maths is correct). My fingerprint is unique indeed. BTW, the 186 bytes is just raw data, no header information.
I wish I still had access to that marketing document where I had a screenshot of my right thumb's hash, I could paste the ASCII text in here for you all to see (hey, the US Government already has my fingerprint on file since the last time I visited Dulles International Airport, why shouldn't you?). Besides, without the actual fingerprinting code, the hash wouldn't do you much good, now, would it.
No, I'm not selling $FINGERPRINTING_SOFTWARE anymore, so don't ask.
To answer the parent's question, the process used in our case is strictly one way. A new fingerprint is hashed and then compared to stored hash(es). There is no way to reconstruct the orginal fingerprint, because all the image data has been thrown away and frankly, it's better this way. Fancy graphics look nice in the mooovies, but are a real pain when it comes to finding a match out of a population of a million fingerprints (and that's a small subset of the national population, since the majority of people have ten fingers.)
Alas, I don't know how the competition does it - probably something similar, though.
Yeah, I know, "in post-Communist Hungary, the print fingers YOU!", etc.
Of course, once the government got hold of this technology, they would put it to use bombing Iraq.
Actually, that's been already done. Not in this war, and surprisingly, it did not involve Iraq (though bonus points will be awarded for proving there is a link after all).
The bombing method the Dambusters used during WW2 employed a similar principle of skipping stones.
Slashdot Mirror
I must de-lurk for this topic.
/ 1974/04/10/31-restrict-pages-under-mediawiki is a good page on how to restrict certain pages in MediaWiki. There is only one level of restriction though - the page is either restricted, or it isn't. To my joy I also discovered that while restriced pages also get indexed for searching, they do not show up among the search results if the user is not on the restricted level himself.
My company is currently centralizing all of its IT functions from the 42 Europe-wide sites it has. Knowledge management is a nightmare, as the institutional knowledge is spread too thin among the old timers to make any impact for the new people. We have some processes documented, but by far not all of them. We decided we needed a written repository of knowledge, as we are growin at a rate where we can not afford to waste time.
We finally decided on MediaWiki, just like some of the others here have suggested, for pretty much the same reasons. It is just great for unstructured information, and the ability to categorize and very quickly link to other pages has turned out to be very useful. It is very quick to update - no need to muck around with HTML and uploading a page. Just hit Edit, change that IP from 223 to 23, click Save and you're set.
Converting existing Word documents to wiki format is essential for quickly populating the wiki with content. We have a lot of support documents with screenshots. I found out that the best way to do that is to save the Word file as HTML. It will export the images both as JPEGs and PNGs. The PNG is the image as it was imported into Word, at its native resolution, while the JPEG is a result of how it has been processed within Word itself (cropped / framed / recolored). I generally just grab the PNGs, unless the cropping was significant, as the JPEG resolution is fairly low. As for the text, I just grab the plain text from the document and mark it up with wikicode. Fairly painless.
Additionally, I also found a nice tool for converting Excel tables into wikicode, for all those worksheets with server IPs, domain functions and other stuff. Save your Excel as CSV then fire up the converter at http://area23.brightbyte.de/csv2wp.php. Just copy-paste (or upload), and presto! You have a nice wiki table. You can then mark it up with colors and other bling-bling if required. Again, I found the process to be relatively fast and painless.
Keeping with the wiki way, the majority of our pages have unrestricted access. Since I'm not a great believer in security through obscurity, we needed something to protect sensitive information - mostly passwords. The privileged few that need to know can get bumped to a higher security level and access these restricted pages.
http://conseil-recherche-innovation.net/index.php
By the way, I full agree with the parent - the wiki by itself is not enough, you do need a librarian / knowledge manager to categorize all the braindumps and also to educate people on its mere existence. I also found that you need to pour a certain amount of info into the wiki before it reaches critical mass and people start to really use it. You do need to work a lot on it, especially in the early stages, with importing content. We didn't bother with scope definitions and categories and stuff - since all of this is so easy to change once the data is up, we'll just build it as we go along.
I switched over to Dvorak about a month ago and while I like it, I miss the ability to write accented like with the US International layout.
Anyone has any tips?
Can the biometric data be hashed and the hash used for verification instead?
The company that I recently worked for makes and sells a fingerprinting system (aka AFIS or Automatic Fingerprint Identification System). It takes input from a fingerprint reader, which is really a special black and white digital camera with a fixed focus, something like this. The software identifies the X,Y coordinates of the specific areas of the fingerprint image, such bifurcations, ridges, furrows and stuff (maybe a fingerprinting expert can help me out here on the details).
The software creates a hash of the two dimensional relationship between the various X,Y coordinates. Here in Hungary if more than 19 of these points match up with a fingerprint taken at a crime scene, you go to jail. That is enough evidence for conviction. The software takes the coordinates of dozens of these areas of interest and can match even partial fingerprints (and palm prints) very quickly, since the search involves comparing short text strings, rather than multi-kilobyte images. As the software analyses spatial relationship rather than image data, it does not matter whether the partial fingerprint is rotated - the relationship between the points stays the same.
FYI, my right thumb's hash was 186 bytes long - that's 1488 bits. 2^1488 is 8.56 x 10^447 (if my maths is correct). My fingerprint is unique indeed. BTW, the 186 bytes is just raw data, no header information.
I wish I still had access to that marketing document where I had a screenshot of my right thumb's hash, I could paste the ASCII text in here for you all to see (hey, the US Government already has my fingerprint on file since the last time I visited Dulles International Airport, why shouldn't you?). Besides, without the actual fingerprinting code, the hash wouldn't do you much good, now, would it.
No, I'm not selling $FINGERPRINTING_SOFTWARE anymore, so don't ask.
To answer the parent's question, the process used in our case is strictly one way. A new fingerprint is hashed and then compared to stored hash(es). There is no way to reconstruct the orginal fingerprint, because all the image data has been thrown away and frankly, it's better this way. Fancy graphics look nice in the mooovies, but are a real pain when it comes to finding a match out of a population of a million fingerprints (and that's a small subset of the national population, since the majority of people have ten fingers.)
Alas, I don't know how the competition does it - probably something similar, though. Yeah, I know, "in post-Communist Hungary, the print fingers YOU!", etc.
Of course, once the government got hold of this technology, they would put it to use bombing Iraq.
Actually, that's been already done. Not in this war, and surprisingly, it did not involve Iraq (though bonus points will be awarded for proving there is a link after all).
The bombing method the Dambusters used during WW2 employed a similar principle of skipping stones.