"Biometrics are bad because you can change your password a whole lot easier than you can change your DNA."
Biometrics are bad because people believe they're perfectly accurate. Just look at the people who support killing suspects if a biometric test "proves" them guilty. The public at large believe that such systems cannot fail.
And it just brings us back to the ID card problem. The harder something is to fake, the more valuable a counterfeit one is. So banks "increase" their security by requiring my fingerprint to withdraw money. Whoop-de-doo, now anyone with my beerglass and a jellybean can withdraw money. Or get on my plane flight and ditch it into the whitehouse. And because biometrics are "infallible", nobody will believe those who complain that it failed.
I count the places I leave resolvable fingerprints, regularly. It's about 30 places per day, and that doesn't include the secure areas at work, or the prints you could get by breaking into my house. 30 per day. And any one of those could give you access to any fingerprint-controlled system where I was a registered user.
Fingerprints? Try face-recognition. One camera every 15 meters apparently, in London. Plus tourists, and not even counting people deliberately trying to photograph you. Do you really want to trust a system where someone can print out my portrait from my website and hold it up to your biometrics system to gain entry?
"Facial recognition is only 1 of the technologies involved in biometrics... To claim that the whole industry has failed to grow because one Type of biometric does not function well is untrue."
Even if a system were your fabled 5-nines accuracy (1 wrong answer per 100,000 questions) it would still be unsuitable for the applications it's being suggested for. It's almost too easy to remind you that the very best biometrics is about 60% accurate.
It's not just about biometrics, although their dismal rate of failure, combined with the unattainable promises of their salesmen should be suspicious enough. It's about the statistics of large numbers. If you have a million people per day going through an airport, and a biometric machine with 99.999% accuracy, you've falsely accused 100 people of being terrorists. Every day.
And, to quote Schneier, it decreases security. Biometrics can be fooled. Easily. Trivially. If you depend on biometrics, then the terrorists will waltz past your scanners undetected, even as the innocent people queue to be strip-searched. Biometrics fail in a predictable way, and anybody who realises that can game the system. Vendors and terrorists alike.
Of course, it's a rosy future for people who sell such failed systems. Look at "lie detectors" for example. Still in use long after it was proven that you could toss a coin for better accuracy. Does it increase security? No. Does it make people think we're doing something? Yes. Sold!
"Ahh, but consider: 74 degrees west is the same as 286 degrees east"
What'll really bug you is whether new york is +40, -73, or +40, +73... It can get quite confusing to use US map data, and to find that New York city is in China
(hint: americans don't like to think of themselves as in the negative half of the world, whereas everyone else likes to have their maps the right way around)
Slashdotting is just one of the reasons that P2P is a useful part of the internet, in addition to HTTP. The bandwidth is bourne by the people receiving the content, and the bandwidth increases the more people are requesting something. It's a pretty sensible model, and scales very well indeed.
Try setting up a server to stream video to people. Big-Brother spent millions on a server farm, with *-loads of bandwidth, all of which they paid for themselves. Do that with P2P, and all you need is a node and some DSL.
Maybe people don't realise the real gains to the internet when they whine about P2P as being some sort of illicit activity...
"Actually, it's in his info at the top of his post"
Yeah, thanks. I don't know what to call that text, as it's kind'a like a.sig, but not a.sig. And no, I have slashdot set to filter stuff to.
Here's a link to the best distributed publishing system around.
It's a bit like a cross between bittorrent and freenet. The data bandwidth multiplies virus-like the more people are downloading something, so it's like bittorrent where the most popular files get the most people serving them. It's also bittorrent-like, in that it works well in the immediate aftermath of publishing something, and gradually slows down as time passes.
It's like freenet, in that anybody can publish anonymously*, though. Get connected, setup a channel, and broadcast the public keys. People can sign-up to your channel, and then they automatically download anything signed with your key.
* so long as a significant percentage of the nodes aren't controlled or monitored by an adversary, but still deniable because you can't prove that someone didn't receive the file from a node that you didn't know about
So it's also a bit like the million-channel television. You create a channel, as your TV show, your radio show, your blog, your news site, your picture site, and people listen in. If people like your stuff, they get the updates every time you transmit.
Even if you don't want to run a climate model, try putting XPlanet on your background, and get the updated cloud images every 3 hours.
It's a great way to stay informed about what's happening weather-wise around you, and you'll be able to watch the weather-forecasts with an "I guessed as much", from being constantly aware of the cloud pictures.
Re:Oh Well, there not the first, there not the las
on
Kazaa-lite Shut Down
·
· Score: 1
Konspire2B. I'd post a URL, but it's in my sig anyway ^^^
"In many industries, it's not hard to find replacements."
Apparently there's a concept of "barrier to entry" which many companies use to stop smaller comapnies competing with them.
In this case, the cost of a snowplow-equipped vehicle is non-trivial, and the vehicles are property of the drivers (typically taxi drivers who want extra work during the winter).
So in this particular case, the state is indeed screwed if their contractors don't like the new terms. I hope the mayor likes shovelling...
It's a contractual issue. It's all about ensuring the state gets what it pays for, and any tracking is done exclusively during the employee's work. This is legal, and this is good.
By similar reasoning, we should attach GPS trackers to each of our elected representatives, to ensure that we get what we pay for, and that they're doing the work they claim to be doing.
A Dozen, a Gross and a Score, plus three times the square root of four, divided by seven, plus five times eleven, equals nine squared and not a bit more.
Slashdot Mirror
I get the part about aircraft, but how will they protect the birds?
This from a country which just finished eating 45 million turkeys?
"Biometrics are bad because you can change your password a whole lot easier than you can change your DNA."
Biometrics are bad because people believe they're perfectly accurate. Just look at the people who support killing suspects if a biometric test "proves" them guilty. The public at large believe that such systems cannot fail.
And it just brings us back to the ID card problem. The harder something is to fake, the more valuable a counterfeit one is. So banks "increase" their security by requiring my fingerprint to withdraw money. Whoop-de-doo, now anyone with my beerglass and a jellybean can withdraw money. Or get on my plane flight and ditch it into the whitehouse. And because biometrics are "infallible", nobody will believe those who complain that it failed.
I count the places I leave resolvable fingerprints, regularly. It's about 30 places per day, and that doesn't include the secure areas at work, or the prints you could get by breaking into my house. 30 per day. And any one of those could give you access to any fingerprint-controlled system where I was a registered user.
Fingerprints? Try face-recognition. One camera every 15 meters apparently, in London. Plus tourists, and not even counting people deliberately trying to photograph you. Do you really want to trust a system where someone can print out my portrait from my website and hold it up to your biometrics system to gain entry?
"Facial recognition is only 1 of the technologies involved in biometrics... To claim that the whole industry has failed to grow because one Type of biometric does not function well is untrue."
Even if a system were your fabled 5-nines accuracy (1 wrong answer per 100,000 questions) it would still be unsuitable for the applications it's being suggested for. It's almost too easy to remind you that the very best biometrics is about 60% accurate.
It's not just about biometrics, although their dismal rate of failure, combined with the unattainable promises of their salesmen should be suspicious enough. It's about the statistics of large numbers. If you have a million people per day going through an airport, and a biometric machine with 99.999% accuracy, you've falsely accused 100 people of being terrorists. Every day.
And, to quote Schneier, it decreases security. Biometrics can be fooled. Easily. Trivially. If you depend on biometrics, then the terrorists will waltz past your scanners undetected, even as the innocent people queue to be strip-searched. Biometrics fail in a predictable way, and anybody who realises that can game the system. Vendors and terrorists alike.
Of course, it's a rosy future for people who sell such failed systems. Look at "lie detectors" for example. Still in use long after it was proven that you could toss a coin for better accuracy. Does it increase security? No. Does it make people think we're doing something? Yes. Sold!
"Ahh, but consider: 74 degrees west is the same as 286 degrees east"
What'll really bug you is whether new york is +40, -73, or +40, +73... It can get quite confusing to use US map data, and to find that New York city is in China
(hint: americans don't like to think of themselves as in the negative half of the world, whereas everyone else likes to have their maps the right way around)
or slashdot the server
Slashdotting is just one of the reasons that P2P is a useful part of the internet, in addition to HTTP. The bandwidth is bourne by the people receiving the content, and the bandwidth increases the more people are requesting something. It's a pretty sensible model, and scales very well indeed.
Try setting up a server to stream video to people. Big-Brother spent millions on a server farm, with *-loads of bandwidth, all of which they paid for themselves. Do that with P2P, and all you need is a node and some DSL.
Maybe people don't realise the real gains to the internet when they whine about P2P as being some sort of illicit activity...
"Actually, it's in his info at the top of his post"
.sig, but not a .sig. And no, I have slashdot set to filter stuff to.
Yeah, thanks. I don't know what to call that text, as it's kind'a like a
Here's a link to the best distributed publishing system around.
It's a bit like a cross between bittorrent and freenet. The data bandwidth multiplies virus-like the more people are downloading something, so it's like bittorrent where the most popular files get the most people serving them. It's also bittorrent-like, in that it works well in the immediate aftermath of publishing something, and gradually slows down as time passes.
It's like freenet, in that anybody can publish anonymously*, though. Get connected, setup a channel, and broadcast the public keys. People can sign-up to your channel, and then they automatically download anything signed with your key.
* so long as a significant percentage of the nodes aren't controlled or monitored by an adversary, but still deniable because you can't prove that someone didn't receive the file from a node that you didn't know about
So it's also a bit like the million-channel television. You create a channel, as your TV show, your radio show, your blog, your news site, your picture site, and people listen in. If people like your stuff, they get the updates every time you transmit.
Nice system.
Even if you don't want to run a climate model, try putting XPlanet on your background, and get the updated cloud images every 3 hours.
It's a great way to stay informed about what's happening weather-wise around you, and you'll be able to watch the weather-forecasts with an "I guessed as much", from being constantly aware of the cloud pictures.
Konspire2B. I'd post a URL, but it's in my sig anyway ^^^
"Well I guess thats one way to stop P2P usage. Destroy the only good kazaa client."
Of course, you can still get the kazzaalite application from any of the P2P networks, including Kazaa.
-1: ironic.
"In many industries, it's not hard to find replacements."
Apparently there's a concept of "barrier to entry" which many companies use to stop smaller comapnies competing with them.
In this case, the cost of a snowplow-equipped vehicle is non-trivial, and the vehicles are property of the drivers (typically taxi drivers who want extra work during the winter).
So in this particular case, the state is indeed screwed if their contractors don't like the new terms. I hope the mayor likes shovelling...
It's a contractual issue.
It's all about ensuring the state gets what it pays for, and any tracking is done exclusively during the employee's work.
This is legal, and this is good.
By similar reasoning, we should attach GPS trackers to each of our elected representatives, to ensure that we get what we pay for, and that they're doing the work they claim to be doing.
It looks nice. Anyone have any thoughts on how it compares to the similarly rated/priced Nomad Zen NX?(offtopic because zen only plays MP3s, but relevant nonetheless because I'm about to buy one)
10% of 4GB is 400MB
No it's not, 10% of 4GB is 409.6MB
How do you create a beach hut?
Integrate 1 / cabin
= log(cabin) + c
Heard about the new "Hubble Space Telescope" cocktail?
...
It's expensive and when you drink it, everything looks fuzzy
Q: What's the easiest way to observe Doppler's effect in one's everyday life?
A: Go out in the evening and look at the cars. They lights are white when they approach, but they are red when they are moving away of you.
((12 + 144 + 20 + (3 * 4^(1/2))) / 7) + (5 * 11) = 9^2 + 0
A Dozen, a Gross and a Score,
plus three times the square root of four,
divided by seven,
plus five times eleven,
equals nine squared and not a bit more.
Q: How far can you see on a clear day?
A: 93 million miles...from here to the Sun.
I have a quantum car. Every time I look at the speedometer I get lost...
Why was Heisenberg's wife unsatisfied?
When he had the time he didn't have the energy, and when he had the position, he didn't have the momentum.
"On the Moon, we could build a solar farm that would fill our energy needs on Earth pretty much entirely."
Hello Maplin? I'd like to order some extension cables. 3,850 of them.
"I never knew what a Lagrange point was."
Isn't it a navy base? Like West Point?
"If, on the other hand, there's a problem with a type of voting machine then what do you do?"
Have a proper election? You know, with votes, and people counting them...
"President Bush To Call For Return To Moon?"
Can President Bush be the first to return to the moon?
As the saying goes, "there is no second rocket"
"They are also not interested in hackers, i.e. people who break into computer systems"
Defining hackers as people who break into computer systems is like defining footballers as people who kill their wives.