It's like walking around with my card number tattooed on my forehead.
So? It's likely that in an RFID credit card system your account number will not be a very interesting piece of data. What the crooks will need is your private key, which will not be broadcast by the card.
Merchants, I'm sure, will not process transactions unless the card passes a challenge/response cycle based on the private key encrypting or signing some data, with the public key available from bank itself for verification purposes. So someone having access to your card number would be a non-issue. They'd have to have physical access to the card itself, which would make it more secure than the current system.
If the cell phones were capable of playing music samples that were user created it's highly unlikely that people would purchase ringtones.
Some can, and I don't. More specifically, my phone (an LG VX6000) can play MP3 ringtones -- once you've purchased the correct USB cable and scoured the Internet for the necessary software, that is.
As an aside, "Battle without Honor or Humanity" from the Kill Bill soundtrack makes a great alarm. Put that sucker on full volume, and it never fails to wake me up.
Broadband over powerlines makes a whole lot of sense. Currently if you want broadband you have to run cable from your local cable provider, phone line from your local phone company, optical fiber from . . . whoever might offer that service (not an option in most areas, including my own, so I'm not sure), or you'll have to set up a satellite dish and worry about weather effects.
But what's the one thing that all computers have in common? They use electricity! And even if you're generating your own, you're still likely hooked up to the grid so that you can sell your excess back.
I can definitely see broadband over power lines being a big hit in developing countries, since they won't have to worry about the added infrastructure for connecting their residents to the Internet. Add voice over IP and you end up with VOIPOPL: Three products for the price of one (give or take a bit of added overhead).
As an aside, what's with all the colons in game titles these days? GTA:SA, 50 Cent: Bulletproof, Hellgate: London, Rome: Total War, Call of Duty: United Offensive, ad nauseam. At least it is Half-life 2, not Half-life: Gordon remains mute.
I would guess that the use of colons is to avoid having to add a numeral to the end of the game. Let's face it, if they had called "GTA: San Andreas" "GTA 5" (or whatever number we're up to) instead, how many people would avoid buying "GTA 4" because they think that a lower number must mean an inferior game? So, from a marketing standpoint, using colons makes perfect sense.
Sure thing. We'll see you for the interview next week. My secretary will fill you in on the details. Oh, and one minor point, you're responsible for your own travel arrangemnts to and from the interview.
Geez, I'll bet you're the life of the party. What's wrong with escaping from reality every now and then? It's both entertaining, and a great way to reduce stress.
True, some people can become obsessive, but the games aren't to fault for that any more than it's the beer's fault when someone is an alcoholic.
It is time to demand more realism in games, instead of this fake 'reality' that the current games offer!
Yeah, and watch as videogames begin to falter against some other form of entertainment that offers people what they actually want. Face it, people want to escape from reality from time to time. Doing so (in moderation) is by no means unhealthy. Take away video games and they'll watch more TV, or do more dope, or maybe even *gasp* read more fiction. Or would you prefer fiction books to stop presenting a "fake reality", too?
I mean if it takes long documents and a ton of time, is it really worth it?
Probably. It's not like there's a shortage of long documents. I mean, pretty much all areas of publishing use electronic documents at some point during the process. I'm sure that the researchers could feed the algorithm a few dozen novels fairly quickly.
As for the running time, it'd probably take a while, but computing power gets cheaper every day.
Also, if it can only recognize languages we already know (and can only read those characters), how useful is this thing?
Who says it can only recognize languages we already know? I suspect that it would be fairly simple to adapt the algorithm to just look at visual input and find patterns in an unknown language.
Even better, if you started feeding it equivalence rules between that language and a known one, I'd imagine that it could eventually start to translate words whose meaning you hadn't explicitly taught it. How cool would that be?
Using the optical phenomenon of 'laser speckle', researchers examined the fine structure of different surfaces using a focused laser, and recorded the intensity of the reflection. The technique was tried on a variety of materials including matt-finish plastic cards, identity cards and coated paperboard packaging and resulted in clear recognition between the samples. This continued even after they were subjected to rough handling including submersion in water, scorching,
scrubbing with an abrasive cleaning pad and being scribbled on with thick black marker.
So let me get this straight; I can scrub on one of these "fingerprinted" document until the letters wear off, write whetever I want on it with a black marker, and it will pass the verification check? Doesn't that kind of prevent the entire purpose of fingerprinting documents in the first place?
"Well Mr. Random, while it is quite unusual to see a tax rebate check of *ahem* eleventy-billion dollars, the article passed all verification checks. We've deposited the amount into your account. Have a nice day."
One of the reasons I like fansubs so much is that they don't assume that you're completely ignorant of Japanese culture. For example, they leave suffixes like -san and -chan on the ends of names. True, most non-Japanese probably wouldn't understand any suffixes beyond -san (thank you, "Karate Kid"). I didn't either, at first. But after watching a bit of fansubbed anime it was quite easy to figure out what they meant. And that does a lot for helping the viewer to understand subtle relationships between characters.
I mean, if someone calls her brother nii-chan vs. nii-san vs. onii-sama vs. ani-ue, it makes a huge difference. But how do you translate that? Answer: you don't You can't. At least, not in any way that doesn't leave it sounding stilted. Not in any way that preserves the subtleties of the relationsuip.
And maybe it's just me, but it just seems . . . wrong, somehow, to see Yamada-san translated as Mr. Yamada.
the digisubs are inconsistant (watch 10 eps and see if they spell names the same way)
When was the last time you watched a digisub? I ask, because I've seen nothing less than extremely high accuracy in the translations (with the exception of a few "speedsubbing" groups who seem to be caught up in a dick waving contest of who can sub an anime the fastest). There are usually several layers of editing and quality checking, and the Internet allows subbing groups to pull in fans with specialty knowledge when needed.
An example: The anime "Monster" takes place mainly in Germany. So the group subbing it went to the official German translation of the preexisting manga to get the proper spellings of character's names. It also has quite a bit of medical jargon, so at least one group recruited a bilingual med school student to make sure that their translations of medical terms were accurate.
Obviously, this type of international co-operation was next to impossible before the advent of the Internet, and it results in a high-quality translation.
I have had it with bloody digisubbers. Real fansubbers got LDs from Japan, transferred onto VHS and manually subtitled.
Ah, the "no true Scotsman" fallacy. Look, these days digisubbers are the "real" fansubbers. Technology has improved since the days of VHS fansubbing. Most fansubs are captured with a TV tuner card, which isn't going to make the quality any worse than what you'd get with a VCR. Usually better, in fact. Plus, every copy is just as good as the original. Can you say that about a 3rd or 4th generation VHS copy? Not to mention the fact that many groups re-release their fansubs with improved quality when the DVD becomes available.
The way I've heard it, humans subconsciously model the sky as a flattened dome. Thus, when presented with two objects of equal apparent size, one on the horizon and one at the zenith, the one on the horizon looks bigger (i.e. is perceived as having a larger actual size) because it's "farther away" than, yet appears to be just as big as, the object that is directly overhead (and thus "closer").
We can nitpick sound in space to death, but nobody ever EVER complains about incidental music. They're the same thing.
No, they're really not the same thing at all. In most cases, it is always assumed that the characters in a movie cannot hear the musical score -- unless, of course, the music is shown to be coming from something in the character's environment.
Sound effects, on the other hand, are always assumed to be coming from within the environment (with the exception of a laugh track), and are thus audible to the character.
But seriously, do the laws in the US actually stop anyone from sharing music? At all?
Of course. There are always people who are so frightened by the thought that they may be on the receiving end of a lawsuit that they seriously curb, or stop altogether, their file sharing. That many ISPs seem willing to reveal their users' identities simply to get the *IAA off their back simply adds to the FUD.
And frankly, I don't see how the Canadian ruling will stop that. Based on what TFA said, it would seem that ISPs can be required to reveal their customers' identities, but only once the record industry presents a clear enough claim against them. They just aren't required to give out that information simply because the record industry says "gimme!" Note that they're not required to give out that information, but that doesn't mean that they won't give it out. Some ISPs may find it easier to just add a "no right to privacy" to their boilerplate, and then turn over any information asked for. I hope not, but it wouldn't surprise me.
Like, yeah, it's great to know that here in Canada we're able to do it LEGALLY
That's not what I got from the article:
If record labels show they have a clear claim against people infringing copyright, "they have a right to have the identity revealed for the purpose of bringing action. However, caution must be exercised by the courts in ordering such disclosure to make sure that privacy rights are invaded in the most minimal way."
Any other firefox users get that stupid survey popup?
Hmm... I'm using Firefox, and I didn't get any popups. I know! You must've been hacked! Quick, report it to the Secret Service!
Anyone out there know a way to block these?
Are you using the Adblock plugin? If not, you should be. I'm showing 11 blocked scripts on that page. I'm not feeling ambitious enough to find out if any of them result in popups, but I wouldn't doubt it.
Re:it's simple, but...
on
Just a Phone?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
it also has a large form factor, not unlike cell phones of yore (ala a Motorola V60). Not attractive.
Actually, I think that's a great idea. There's a large, mostly-untapped market out there with the older generation, which consists of people who would definitely benefit from a larger handset with easier-to-read text and easier-to-press buttons.
For example, my grandma doesn't need a camera or games, that kind of stuff just confuses her. Her eyesight isn't so great at close distances, so larger text (both on the screen and on buttons) is a plus. Also, she has mild arthritis, and a larger phone with larger buttons would be a lot easier for her to use.
For legitimate P2P (e.g. downloading FC) you don't need all this.
Trackerless BitTorrent allows you to download legitimate free content even if the distributor's tracker happens to go down (for instance, when someone posts a link to the tracker on slashdot, and their server spontaneously combusts). Sure, you don't need trackerless BT, but then again, you don't need BT at all.
The bottom line is that adding a distributed tracker both offloads even more bandwidth from the servers -- which is the whole point of using BitTorrent in the first place -- as well as eliminates the system's main weakness (e.g. removing content, legitimate or otherwise, from distribution by taking down a single computer).
To me, this looks like these cards are totally disassociated from the card holder when used. That is most certainly NOT more secure than we have currently.
How so? Do you know how many times I've used my card in the past several years just by swiping it myself through a card reader at various retail establishments? Out of all those times, I had a cashier ask to see the card so that she could look at the signature exactly once. And she didn't even verify the signature against anything else; she simply checked to see if it was there.
Sounds to me like credit cards are currently disassociated from the user (in practice, at least). Using smart cards, even without any biometric identification, would leave us no worse off than we already are. In fact, it'd be significantly more secure, since the card number wouldn't mean squat by itself.
I don't care how encrypted or advanced or "secure" it is, I don't want my credit card doing anything unless I've taken it out of my wallet.
But who knows what their normal credit card's doing while it's sitting in their wallet? I mean, how many people have had access to your card at some point? How many people have swiped your card at a store or restaurant? Guess what, they now have access to the all of the important bits of information on your card: The account number, expiration date, and confirmation code.
Compare that to a smart card using public-key encryption. They can sit there and scan your card all day long without getting a single useful piece of information off of it. Oh, they might get your account number, but that's no longer very important. It's your private key that they need, and they're not going to get it from scanning the card.
Joe Hacker can hang out next to the checkout line at your grocery store for 5 minutes and get a dozen credit card numbers.
However, if things are done correctly, your credit card number will no longer be the important bit of information that it currently is. It will simply be a type of GUID that is useless without the circuitry that holds your private key. That will be the useful piece of information stored by your card, and will only be accessible to someone if they have the physical card.
Slashdot Mirror
Merchants, I'm sure, will not process transactions unless the card passes a challenge/response cycle based on the private key encrypting or signing some data, with the public key available from bank itself for verification purposes. So someone having access to your card number would be a non-issue. They'd have to have physical access to the card itself, which would make it more secure than the current system.
As an aside, "Battle without Honor or Humanity" from the Kill Bill soundtrack makes a great alarm. Put that sucker on full volume, and it never fails to wake me up.
was it a Hattori Hanzo sword?
Broadband over powerlines makes a whole lot of sense. Currently if you want broadband you have to run cable from your local cable provider, phone line from your local phone company, optical fiber from . . . whoever might offer that service (not an option in most areas, including my own, so I'm not sure), or you'll have to set up a satellite dish and worry about weather effects.
But what's the one thing that all computers have in common? They use electricity! And even if you're generating your own, you're still likely hooked up to the grid so that you can sell your excess back.
I can definitely see broadband over power lines being a big hit in developing countries, since they won't have to worry about the added infrastructure for connecting their residents to the Internet. Add voice over IP and you end up with VOIPOPL: Three products for the price of one (give or take a bit of added overhead).
Sure thing. We'll see you for the interview next week. My secretary will fill you in on the details. Oh, and one minor point, you're responsible for your own travel arrangemnts to and from the interview.
I look forward to meeting with you.
Sincerely,
Mark Homnick, CEO
True, some people can become obsessive, but the games aren't to fault for that any more than it's the beer's fault when someone is an alcoholic.
Yeah, and watch as videogames begin to falter against some other form of entertainment that offers people what they actually want. Face it, people want to escape from reality from time to time. Doing so (in moderation) is by no means unhealthy. Take away video games and they'll watch more TV, or do more dope, or maybe even *gasp* read more fiction. Or would you prefer fiction books to stop presenting a "fake reality", too?
As for the running time, it'd probably take a while, but computing power gets cheaper every day. Who says it can only recognize languages we already know? I suspect that it would be fairly simple to adapt the algorithm to just look at visual input and find patterns in an unknown language.
Even better, if you started feeding it equivalence rules between that language and a known one, I'd imagine that it could eventually start to translate words whose meaning you hadn't explicitly taught it. How cool would that be?
But couldn't you have a string of portable towers acting as repeaters to move the signal out to a location that does have functioning landlines?
"Well Mr. Random, while it is quite unusual to see a tax rebate check of *ahem* eleventy-billion dollars, the article passed all verification checks. We've deposited the amount into your account. Have a nice day."
One of the reasons I like fansubs so much is that they don't assume that you're completely ignorant of Japanese culture. For example, they leave suffixes like -san and -chan on the ends of names. True, most non-Japanese probably wouldn't understand any suffixes beyond -san (thank you, "Karate Kid"). I didn't either, at first. But after watching a bit of fansubbed anime it was quite easy to figure out what they meant. And that does a lot for helping the viewer to understand subtle relationships between characters.
I mean, if someone calls her brother nii-chan vs. nii-san vs. onii-sama vs. ani-ue, it makes a huge difference. But how do you translate that? Answer: you don't You can't. At least, not in any way that doesn't leave it sounding stilted. Not in any way that preserves the subtleties of the relationsuip.
And maybe it's just me, but it just seems . . . wrong, somehow, to see Yamada-san translated as Mr. Yamada.
An example: The anime "Monster" takes place mainly in Germany. So the group subbing it went to the official German translation of the preexisting manga to get the proper spellings of character's names. It also has quite a bit of medical jargon, so at least one group recruited a bilingual med school student to make sure that their translations of medical terms were accurate.
Obviously, this type of international co-operation was next to impossible before the advent of the Internet, and it results in a high-quality translation.
Ah, the "no true Scotsman" fallacy. Look, these days digisubbers are the "real" fansubbers. Technology has improved since the days of VHS fansubbing. Most fansubs are captured with a TV tuner card, which isn't going to make the quality any worse than what you'd get with a VCR. Usually better, in fact. Plus, every copy is just as good as the original. Can you say that about a 3rd or 4th generation VHS copy? Not to mention the fact that many groups re-release their fansubs with improved quality when the DVD becomes available.
The way I've heard it, humans subconsciously model the sky as a flattened dome. Thus, when presented with two objects of equal apparent size, one on the horizon and one at the zenith, the one on the horizon looks bigger (i.e. is perceived as having a larger actual size) because it's "farther away" than, yet appears to be just as big as, the object that is directly overhead (and thus "closer").
That's no moon!
Well, what you said was that cookies were phoning home, which makes about as much sense as a text file phoning home on bootup.
Sound effects, on the other hand, are always assumed to be coming from within the environment (with the exception of a laugh track), and are thus audible to the character.
And frankly, I don't see how the Canadian ruling will stop that. Based on what TFA said, it would seem that ISPs can be required to reveal their customers' identities, but only once the record industry presents a clear enough claim against them. They just aren't required to give out that information simply because the record industry says "gimme!" Note that they're not required to give out that information, but that doesn't mean that they won't give it out. Some ISPs may find it easier to just add a "no right to privacy" to their boilerplate, and then turn over any information asked for. I hope not, but it wouldn't surprise me. That's not what I got from the article:
For example, my grandma doesn't need a camera or games, that kind of stuff just confuses her. Her eyesight isn't so great at close distances, so larger text (both on the screen and on buttons) is a plus. Also, she has mild arthritis, and a larger phone with larger buttons would be a lot easier for her to use.
The bottom line is that adding a distributed tracker both offloads even more bandwidth from the servers -- which is the whole point of using BitTorrent in the first place -- as well as eliminates the system's main weakness (e.g. removing content, legitimate or otherwise, from distribution by taking down a single computer).
Sounds to me like credit cards are currently disassociated from the user (in practice, at least). Using smart cards, even without any biometric identification, would leave us no worse off than we already are. In fact, it'd be significantly more secure, since the card number wouldn't mean squat by itself.
Compare that to a smart card using public-key encryption. They can sit there and scan your card all day long without getting a single useful piece of information off of it. Oh, they might get your account number, but that's no longer very important. It's your private key that they need, and they're not going to get it from scanning the card.