sony k7000i. plays mp3. initial apprehensiveness turned into pure love after a single day of twiddling around with it.
guess what the catch is - yup - storage! Only 40 MB - too much for photos (from the built-in camera) plus ringtones, too little for music. There are rumoursthough that the next version will accomodate a memory stick......
right now the only useful thing about the mp3 playing is that I can get the old british post office public telephone ringtone for free.
It must be the porn - friend of mine wintered over there and claimed that even with nearly non-stop viewing he didnt get through the video library they had - and good quality stuff apparently - purchased with tax-payer money. Boy - am I bummed about that!
I guess he didnt get much time to "watch" - what with getting the 2400 baud link to work and cleaning out the loo every so often - yeah EVERYONE on base gets assigned to shit detail at some time - its a community thing. And they arent allowed to leave the crap there either - the frozen turdys are loaded into bags and onto the supply ship and heaved overboard after they cross the 30 degree line.
Damn I need to memflush() large aread of my brain!
The Secret Service are the original T-Men - T for Treasury. Protecting the president is ONLY ONE of their jobs. Established in 1865 to investigate currency counterfeiting, they only began part-time presidential protection duties in 1894. The bulk of the USSS agents investigate all kinds of money related fraud.
They are probably the single most non-partisan and politically un-influenceable investigating agency in the employ of the US government (Hopefully that is not just PR spin!).
Note that the point about the difficulty of sharing decryption keys that I have made earlier is poingnantly high-lighted in this article - as the TFA says - "Security experts said the U.S. government decided not to encrypt the data because of the risks involved in sharing the method of decryption with other countries.".
Anyway, here is my original take on the subject and I find more reason to stick with it every day!
I agree that contactless smart cards are more secure than plain old RFID systems (PORS). However, given the usage model for a passport, it is highly unlikely to be a design option for passports.
A typical passport must be
a. Writeable and readable by the issuing authority
b. Readable by the passport scanners of ANY country that the holder cares to travel to (assuming universal deployment of this technology which, admittedly, might be a tad unrealistic today). In any case, it must be readable by say, a dozen or so countries.
In a typical contactless smart card solution, you would wave the card in the vicinity of a scanner which
(i) either embeds the required crypto intelligence to talk to the card (issuer entity same as scanner entity)
or
(ii) is connected to a backend-crypto server that acts as a clearing house and mutually authenticates a "Card from Issuer A " and a "Scanner from Entity B" so that they can establish a trust relationship on the basis of which to communicate.
In the case of contactless smart passports, this will require the establishment of a crypto-exchange that allows all member countries' scanners to read passports encrypted by any of the other member countries. Key management, security, key exchange and fault management are horrendously difficult in deployments like this.
The apparent benefit of "contactlessness" in this situation is far outweighed by its complexity of deployment, cost of management and cumbersomeness of use.
Ergo, closing the gap to make a passport based on a contact smart chip is a much simpler, robust and viable solution. All that is required is a reality check that recognises the hype of card-waving for what it is.
Being un-versed in gal-soap tv, I tried searching for Brandon Routh and noticed this weird thing - on www.brandonrouth. Looks like Google is a/. vector now!
www.brandonrouth.tv Temporarily Unavailable
This account has surpassed its bandwidth allocation at the present time. You may reach the account administrator at www@www.brandonrouth.tv
Wasn't really doubting correctness of your post - read my previous comment with humour filters on -
the "pacific northeast dung beetle with overgrown greed glands" uses Longhorn in its strategy of world dominance........:)
Sure you can tell which country someone is logging on from - I can tell from the volume of Ads that get thrown my way in Swedish, even when I'm looking at sites in the US and UK (sad thing is I don't even speak swedish, just happen to be staying here for a while).
Five years ago, you could have been pooh-poohed (yeah, I read that phrase on slashdot this week) for suggesting that people could be made to use cyber-passports / visas to access content on the internet. I doubt too many pooh-poohers will be in evidence in these wonderful times when the legislative intent in (surprise, surprise) the worlds largest and plural democratic nations is to criminalize every little infraction.
And its not surprising that governments view the internet (and the web of information it underlies) as a threat - governance presupposes control - the whole superstructure oof traditional administrative theory falls apart when you have this uncontrolled entity that distributes information of all kinds indiscriminately.
Your tax dollars at work. Expect disruptions on the information highway.
(Damn, and I'd promised myself no more info superhighway jokes).
If you think this is annoying...
on
Search By.... Email?
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
Calling all of your in NY - anyone know where the little falafel place is (sorry, forgot the name) that has the hot Kim Catrall lookalike waitress - no, not the one on the next block from Grays Papaya (the wairess there is a frumpy *&^@ - this one is closer to the Staten island ferry terminal, but I know you can't drive there easy because of the one-way streets - you can get there on foot in about 15 minutes - and oh - you'd remember they have this incredible chilli relish....I think the waitress is called Rhonda - or was that Leila...anyways it was something beginning with a P. Let me know cuz I'm really need to get my pregnant friend some of their awesome gyros - don't you hate it when your pregnant friends land up asking for the weirdest food?
Now imagine responding to a zillion such mails from friends of friends of friends....
This combination of medical science and computer technology is long overdue in its use in improving the quality of life of people afflicted with different kinds of motor function degradation.
One possible reason why such advances seem to take longer than for the pacific tectonic plate to move a mile is the hemlock cup with its swill of politics, corporate greed, litigation and religion. Between them, they throw up enough obstacles in the path of medical advancement - sometimes justifiable on ethical grounds - but mostly to advance to their own selfish power plays.
Makes one wonder though what the side-effects would be though - would the procedure be safe for someone like Stephen Hawkins? Would the hundreds of electrodes somehow kill something off making time travel impossible? (oh! wait - he already reneged on that....). But seriously, some study into the invasiveness quotient of this would surely be welcome.
As a parting thought - is any one else surprised that Pong made it to the top 3 list of things to do?! whatever happened to pr0n!?
Obligatory sign-off - its futile - you will be assimilated.
I would also point the poster of the grandparent to one of the most insightful and lucid arguments for atheism by Douglas Adams in his (sadly posthumpously published) "Salmon of Doubt".
It tells the hypothetical story of a puddle of water that franctically clings on to the idea of how well the world around it (namely the hole in the ground that it inhabited by it) is made by God to fit it exactly, even as the sun slowly evaporates and shrinks it.
Oh heck...who am I kidding...believers discount rationality anyway, might as well save my breath.
I agree that contactless smart cards are more secure than plain old RFID systems (PORS). However, given the usage model for a passport, it is highly unlikely to be a design option for passports.
A typical passport must be
a. Writeable and readable by the issuing authority
b. Readable by the passport scanners of ANY country that the holder cares to travel to (assuming universal deployment of this technology which, admittedly, might be a tad unrealistic today). In any case, it must be readable by say, a dozen or so countries.
In a typical contactless smart card solution, you would wave the card in the vicinity of a scanner which
(i) either embeds the required crypto intelligence to talk to the card (issuer entity same as scanner entity)
or
(ii) is connected to a backend-crypto server that acts as a clearing house and mutually authenticates a "Card from Issuer A " and a "Scanner from Entity B" so that they can establish a trust relationship on the basis of which to communicate.
In the case of contactless smart passports, this will require the establishment of a crypto-exchange that allows all member countries' scanners to read passports encrypted by any of the other member countries. Key management, security, key exchange and fault management are horrendously difficult in deployments like this.
The apparent benefit of "contactlessness" in this situation is far outweighed by its complexity of deployment, cost of management and cumbersomeness of use.
Ergo, closing the gap to make a passport based on a contact smart chip is a much simpler, robust and viable solution. All that is required is a reality check that recognises the hype of card-waving for what it is.
Listen up, because I gave up moderation rights on this thread to say this.
Many of us on Slashdot use Google very frequently (almighty god, give us this day our daily byte...) to find all kinds of information including stuff that we need and use to make our livelihood. We also use google to keep up with the news. Mostly, we find what we need if it is out there on the net.
This easy access to information on the net seems to have distorted our expectations somewhat. We expect, nay demand, that Google find everything there is to find, always, correctly, without fear or favour, without regard to consequences that might affect Google itself, without consideration for the laws of the many lands that Google serves - in short we want Google to be a completely good and benevolevent omniscient oracle. Googles 'do ot be evil" motto is partly to blame for this - especially to people unfamiliar with the context of the phrase. I don't think the motto calls on Google to commit hara-kiri to assert its fealty to freedom and the protection of all good in the universe. I do not expect Google to take on the Death Star in a battered Millenium Falcon. I do expect, and rightfully, that google will not screw me over by selling my personal information, by setting terms and conditions that take away my ability to use it in conjunction with any other service or sofware I want, by taking away my right to choose, by deliberately and maliciously determining what I see in order to increase their profit.
Unfortunately, the same omniscient hold that Google has on the information on the net makes it easier for oppressive governments to control information. Previously, where such regimes had to track and control a million individual sources of information, they can now achieve that control by influencing Google. Since Google is subject to the laws of the countries where it operates (GASP!), it has no choice but to comply when threatened with complete blocking of its services in e.g. China or France. Remember the case of Yahoo! and neo-Nazi material? You can bet that Yahoo! will pull that information now that it is clear the first amendment will not protect them from legal process in France or Germany in respect of that material.
So, the question is, do we give up on google altogether? Of course not - it has for better or worse, grown into an extension of our memory, we google as easily as we breathe - my three year old daughter knows that google will help her find her favorite cartoon sites! What we need is a tempering of the expectation that we have of Google. Get used to the idea - you will need it more in the days to come, Google is merely another tool you have at your disposal. It is NOT the be all and end all of all known human wisdom.
Two factor authentication relies on (d'uh) two inputs to the authentication algorithm - something you know (like your username) and something you have (like a password - whether generated by a SecurId or not).
The advantage of the automagically generated password is that the password is a temporal function of the account. This means that the server and the password generator both work off the same clock base to calculate a password for your account and authentication succeeds if the two match (within some non-zero time window - to compensate for clock drift). the password is thus valid for a very short duration and makes it very hard for a MIM to capture, replay and use
As far as I can see the first (user memorised password) is merely an artefact of an older system left in there to make the user feel good about having some password control since that is the fator that is most vulnerable to compromise (think social engineering).
A more robust mechanism would be to add a challenge response to this mechanism - the suthenticating system gives you two numbers (n1, n2)which you feed into your password generator and it generates the response thus -
R sub t = f(t, n1, n2)
The authenticating system performs the same computation and accepts your password if it matches with the result generated locally. Banks in Sweden have been using this for quite a while now - the password generator is, of course, protected by a PIN number to unlock it for use and therin lies the weakest link!
As cellphone operators run into service plateau mode, the effort to find more innovative revenue generating services gets more aggressive. In most cases, it causes enormous heartburn and annoyance to operator and customer and the "value added service" dies a quiet fussless death.
Once in a great while there comes along an idea of enduring worth - something that really makes life easier by providing a simple solution to small everyday problems. The concept of the mWallet, being pushed by the MeT Forum is one such - simply stated - it is a framework designed to allow you to make small payments (aka micropayments) using your phone - the debit going to your cellphone bill or a pre-paid electronic wad. You could do this using sms, or mms or even by dialling DTMF tones in a call! the idea is that you could use your cellphone as an alternative to your debit card or credit card within certain limits.
Of course, this has one significant drawback (what? only one? surely we are missing some...but...on with the post). Traditional credit channels underwritten by the likes of Visa and Mastercard protect the seller and purchaser in numerous ways - many of them directly translating as potential fiscal liability for the underwriter. Who will play that role in the mobile transaction framework? It seems at this point that insurance companies will need to fill that need - but only time will tell.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow Sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-three million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think cellular phones are a pretty neat idea.
God, I miss looking forward to his next book. DNA, Return If Possible.
This is unfortunately a growing trend - within the last week I count at least three dupe stories - could it be that the volume of submissions has swamped the Editorial mechanisms? Is it time for a fresh think on how to avoid dupes?
I'm betting there are feasible ways in which mechanical dupe checking can be performed. It should be fairly simple to write a few scripts (yeah yeah - take your choice - perl, python, - whats that you say ? awk? sure!) all new submissions to build an article wise list of keywords. The next step is ingenious and completely On-Topic in this otherwise OT post - use the same mechanisms as spam checking to match - all new submissions bayesian matched against worth of submissions for dupe score!!
Looks like some article-posting-karma-whoring is in progress....and the ed fell for it.
We all saw this story on slashdot before.
I quote from the original -
Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday July 21, @02:44PM
from the listening-to-foghat-on-your-ficas dept.
Kerhop writes "People who like talking to their plants can now enjoy a musical accompaniment, thanks to a Japanese invention that turns petals and leaves into amplifiers. Several others are also reporting details of how it works."
On second thoughts - this plant as speaker idea is not so hot either....
Very few people realise that deploying a cheap effective reverse firewall will save them from being unwitting spam zombies (kinda sounds like sex slaves don't it? It sure is as demeaning!).
Granny had the right ideas.
Home users, please note -
a. You need a firewall
b. You need a reverse firewall
c. You need to dump IE and use Firefox
d. You need to try dumping windoze and move on - that puppy is probably crapping all over your machine.
--
When I've stumbled on a bad entry in the areas that I am an expert in, I know I have gone back to correct it. I'm willing to bet that intellectual egoism has nudged many other./ers to do the same. Aside from the forlorn hope that chicks will be impressed...
The point being that the Wikipedia is pretty much organic in its structure - at any point in time it is changing in response to external input. The "immune system" itself is evolving as the editors encounter new infections and find ways to fight them. At the same time, the immune system fights poisoned data that found its way into the system - sometimes the response is sluggish - possibly because the immune system does not recognize it as an infection. My guess is that the immune system is overloaded and there arent enough corectly programmed phagocytes circulating around in the system (bet the editors over at Wikipedia never thpought they'd ever be called phagocytes!).
As an interesting aside, I noticed that as the complexity and interconnect between the articles in the wiki grows, so does the damage that a bad germ can do, on account of being linked back to from many places.
Does that mean the Wikipedia is worthless? Certainly not. As a quick and convenient starting point for starting a search, it is amazingly useful. Remember, most of us who do use the wiki today actually know a little about the subject we are looking up - we are usually looking for more detailed information. The kind that's hard to manufacture.
Sure, you need to cross-check the information in there with an independent source befiore betting your butt on it, but it tells you what to look for. Sure, it is almost worthless when the search term doesnt belong in a glossary of computing, gaming and communications terms, but I believe that will change. Everyone loves to be published! And those of us who contribute to it will keep a neighbourhood watch on the corpus of the wiki, if only to protect our sex-appeal...err...pride in having contributed to a reference work.
Different rules apply to ordinary citizens and the powerful. Even if they all belong to the same political party. Ever wondered why the NRA doesnt kick up a stink when its members can't carry their guns (yeah the ones you have to pry their cold dead fingers off of) to the Republican convention where they will nomnate a hunting shooting prez candidate? Cuz the NRA knows which side of its bread is buttered.
Similarly, the common man's information is visible to the TLA agencies and not the other way around - you nee dto be monitored for your own protection - remember the baby monitors? This is the adult version.
Of course it was stupid of the posters to publish what was not really public domain information, but that is a separate bowl of pickled herring altogether.
Watch as the government makes it mandatory for discussion boards to maintain logs for a much much longer time. And to edit/censor posts in real time to prevent children from pornographic material...after all the children must be secured.
Slashdot Mirror
guess what the catch is - yup - storage! Only 40 MB - too much for photos (from the built-in camera) plus ringtones, too little for music. There are rumoursthough that the next version will accomodate a memory stick......
right now the only useful thing about the mp3 playing is that I can get the old british post office public telephone ringtone for free.
I guess he didnt get much time to "watch" - what with getting the 2400 baud link to work and cleaning out the loo every so often - yeah EVERYONE on base gets assigned to shit detail at some time - its a community thing. And they arent allowed to leave the crap there either - the frozen turdys are loaded into bags and onto the supply ship and heaved overboard after they cross the 30 degree line.
Damn I need to memflush() large aread of my brain!
They are probably the single most non-partisan and politically un-influenceable investigating agency in the employ of the US government (Hopefully that is not just PR spin!).
Note that the point about the difficulty of sharing decryption keys that I have made earlier is poingnantly high-lighted in this article - as the TFA says - "Security experts said the U.S. government decided not to encrypt the data because of the risks involved in sharing the method of decryption with other countries.".
Anyway, here is my original take on the subject and I find more reason to stick with it every day!
I agree that contactless smart cards are more secure than plain old RFID systems (PORS). However, given the usage model for a passport, it is highly unlikely to be a design option for passports.
A typical passport must be
a. Writeable and readable by the issuing authority
b. Readable by the passport scanners of ANY country that the holder cares to travel to (assuming universal deployment of this technology which, admittedly, might be a tad unrealistic today). In any case, it must be readable by say, a dozen or so countries.
In a typical contactless smart card solution, you would wave the card in the vicinity of a scanner which
(i) either embeds the required crypto intelligence to talk to the card (issuer entity same as scanner entity)
or
(ii) is connected to a backend-crypto server that acts as a clearing house and mutually authenticates a "Card from Issuer A " and a "Scanner from Entity B" so that they can establish a trust relationship on the basis of which to communicate.
In the case of contactless smart passports, this will require the establishment of a crypto-exchange that allows all member countries' scanners to read passports encrypted by any of the other member countries. Key management, security, key exchange and fault management are horrendously difficult in deployments like this.
The apparent benefit of "contactlessness" in this situation is far outweighed by its complexity of deployment, cost of management and cumbersomeness of use.
Ergo, closing the gap to make a passport based on a contact smart chip is a much simpler, robust and viable solution. All that is required is a reality check that recognises the hype of card-waving for what it is.
You have a rabbit bone in your beard
www.brandonrouth.tv Temporarily Unavailable
This account has surpassed its bandwidth allocation at the present time. You may reach the account administrator at www@www.brandonrouth.tv
Wasn't really doubting correctness of your post - read my previous comment with humour filters on - ........ :)
the "pacific northeast dung beetle with overgrown greed glands" uses Longhorn in its strategy of world dominance
Surely you meant "Strategus Longihornus" - the still evolving pacific north-east dung beetle with overgrown greed glands.
Five years ago, you could have been pooh-poohed (yeah, I read that phrase on slashdot this week) for suggesting that people could be made to use cyber-passports / visas to access content on the internet. I doubt too many pooh-poohers will be in evidence in these wonderful times when the legislative intent in (surprise, surprise) the worlds largest and plural democratic nations is to criminalize every little infraction.
And its not surprising that governments view the internet (and the web of information it underlies) as a threat - governance presupposes control - the whole superstructure oof traditional administrative theory falls apart when you have this uncontrolled entity that distributes information of all kinds indiscriminately.
Your tax dollars at work. Expect disruptions on the information highway.
(Damn, and I'd promised myself no more info superhighway jokes).
Now imagine responding to a zillion such mails from friends of friends of friends....
enjoy your sanity while it lasts.
OMFG, I just realised this could just be true (and insightful)....Hey Jimbo, go run check on the tarp ....
One possible reason why such advances seem to take longer than for the pacific tectonic plate to move a mile is the hemlock cup with its swill of politics, corporate greed, litigation and religion. Between them, they throw up enough obstacles in the path of medical advancement - sometimes justifiable on ethical grounds - but mostly to advance to their own selfish power plays.
Makes one wonder though what the side-effects would be though - would the procedure be safe for someone like Stephen Hawkins? Would the hundreds of electrodes somehow kill something off making time travel impossible? (oh! wait - he already reneged on that ....). But seriously, some study into the invasiveness quotient of this would surely be welcome.
As a parting thought - is any one else surprised that Pong made it to the top 3 list of things to do?! whatever happened to pr0n!?
Obligatory sign-off - its futile - you will be assimilated.
truly weird....why would it do that!?
It tells the hypothetical story of a puddle of water that franctically clings on to the idea of how well the world around it (namely the hole in the ground that it inhabited by it) is made by God to fit it exactly, even as the sun slowly evaporates and shrinks it.
Oh heck...who am I kidding...believers discount rationality anyway, might as well save my breath.
A typical passport must be
a. Writeable and readable by the issuing authority
b. Readable by the passport scanners of ANY country that the holder cares to travel to (assuming universal deployment of this technology which, admittedly, might be a tad unrealistic today). In any case, it must be readable by say, a dozen or so countries.
In a typical contactless smart card solution, you would wave the card in the vicinity of a scanner which
(i) either embeds the required crypto intelligence to talk to the card (issuer entity same as scanner entity)
or
(ii) is connected to a backend-crypto server that acts as a clearing house and mutually authenticates a "Card from Issuer A " and a "Scanner from Entity B" so that they can establish a trust relationship on the basis of which to communicate.
In the case of contactless smart passports, this will require the establishment of a crypto-exchange that allows all member countries' scanners to read passports encrypted by any of the other member countries. Key management, security, key exchange and fault management are horrendously difficult in deployments like this.
The apparent benefit of "contactlessness" in this situation is far outweighed by its complexity of deployment, cost of management and cumbersomeness of use.
Ergo, closing the gap to make a passport based on a contact smart chip is a much simpler, robust and viable solution. All that is required is a reality check that recognises the hype of card-waving for what it is.
Many of us on Slashdot use Google very frequently (almighty god, give us this day our daily byte...) to find all kinds of information including stuff that we need and use to make our livelihood. We also use google to keep up with the news. Mostly, we find what we need if it is out there on the net.
This easy access to information on the net seems to have distorted our expectations somewhat. We expect, nay demand, that Google find everything there is to find, always, correctly, without fear or favour, without regard to consequences that might affect Google itself, without consideration for the laws of the many lands that Google serves - in short we want Google to be a completely good and benevolevent omniscient oracle. Googles 'do ot be evil" motto is partly to blame for this - especially to people unfamiliar with the context of the phrase. I don't think the motto calls on Google to commit hara-kiri to assert its fealty to freedom and the protection of all good in the universe. I do not expect Google to take on the Death Star in a battered Millenium Falcon. I do expect, and rightfully, that google will not screw me over by selling my personal information, by setting terms and conditions that take away my ability to use it in conjunction with any other service or sofware I want, by taking away my right to choose, by deliberately and maliciously determining what I see in order to increase their profit.
Unfortunately, the same omniscient hold that Google has on the information on the net makes it easier for oppressive governments to control information. Previously, where such regimes had to track and control a million individual sources of information, they can now achieve that control by influencing Google. Since Google is subject to the laws of the countries where it operates (GASP!), it has no choice but to comply when threatened with complete blocking of its services in e.g. China or France. Remember the case of Yahoo! and neo-Nazi material? You can bet that Yahoo! will pull that information now that it is clear the first amendment will not protect them from legal process in France or Germany in respect of that material.
So, the question is, do we give up on google altogether? Of course not - it has for better or worse, grown into an extension of our memory, we google as easily as we breathe - my three year old daughter knows that google will help her find her favorite cartoon sites! What we need is a tempering of the expectation that we have of Google. Get used to the idea - you will need it more in the days to come, Google is merely another tool you have at your disposal. It is NOT the be all and end all of all known human wisdom.
The advantage of the automagically generated password is that the password is a temporal function of the account. This means that the server and the password generator both work off the same clock base to calculate a password for your account and authentication succeeds if the two match (within some non-zero time window - to compensate for clock drift). the password is thus valid for a very short duration and makes it very hard for a MIM to capture, replay and use
As far as I can see the first (user memorised password) is merely an artefact of an older system left in there to make the user feel good about having some password control since that is the fator that is most vulnerable to compromise (think social engineering).
A more robust mechanism would be to add a challenge response to this mechanism - the suthenticating system gives you two numbers (n1, n2)which you feed into your password generator and it generates the response thus -
R sub t = f(t, n1, n2)
The authenticating system performs the same computation and accepts your password if it matches with the result generated locally. Banks in Sweden have been using this for quite a while now - the password generator is, of course, protected by a PIN number to unlock it for use and therin lies the weakest link!
OTOH, he could just be a man with low span suseptibility :)
Once in a great while there comes along an idea of enduring worth - something that really makes life easier by providing a simple solution to small everyday problems. The concept of the mWallet, being pushed by the MeT Forum is one such - simply stated - it is a framework designed to allow you to make small payments (aka micropayments) using your phone - the debit going to your cellphone bill or a pre-paid electronic wad. You could do this using sms, or mms or even by dialling DTMF tones in a call! the idea is that you could use your cellphone as an alternative to your debit card or credit card within certain limits.
Of course, this has one significant drawback (what? only one? surely we are missing some...but...on with the post). Traditional credit channels underwritten by the likes of Visa and Mastercard protect the seller and purchaser in numerous ways - many of them directly translating as potential fiscal liability for the underwriter. Who will play that role in the mobile transaction framework? It seems at this point that insurance companies will need to fill that need - but only time will tell.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow Sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-three million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think cellular phones are a pretty neat idea. God, I miss looking forward to his next book.
DNA, Return If Possible.
I'm betting there are feasible ways in which mechanical dupe checking can be performed. It should be fairly simple to write a few scripts (yeah yeah - take your choice - perl, python, - whats that you say ? awk? sure!) all new submissions to build an article wise list of keywords. The next step is ingenious and completely On-Topic in this otherwise OT post - use the same mechanisms as spam checking to match - all new submissions bayesian matched against worth of submissions for dupe score!!
Viola -
I quote from the original -
Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday July 21, @02:44PM from the listening-to-foghat-on-your-ficas dept. Kerhop writes "People who like talking to their plants can now enjoy a musical accompaniment, thanks to a Japanese invention that turns petals and leaves into amplifiers. Several others are also reporting details of how it works."
On second thoughts - this plant as speaker idea is not so hot either....
Very few people realise that deploying a cheap effective reverse firewall will save them from being unwitting spam zombies (kinda sounds like sex slaves don't it? It sure is as demeaning!).
Granny had the right ideas.
Home users, please note - a. You need a firewall
b. You need a reverse firewall
c. You need to dump IE and use Firefox
d. You need to try dumping windoze and move on - that puppy is probably crapping all over your machine.
--
The point being that the Wikipedia is pretty much organic in its structure - at any point in time it is changing in response to external input. The "immune system" itself is evolving as the editors encounter new infections and find ways to fight them. At the same time, the immune system fights poisoned data that found its way into the system - sometimes the response is sluggish - possibly because the immune system does not recognize it as an infection. My guess is that the immune system is overloaded and there arent enough corectly programmed phagocytes circulating around in the system (bet the editors over at Wikipedia never thpought they'd ever be called phagocytes!).
As an interesting aside, I noticed that as the complexity and interconnect between the articles in the wiki grows, so does the damage that a bad germ can do, on account of being linked back to from many places.
Does that mean the Wikipedia is worthless? Certainly not. As a quick and convenient starting point for starting a search, it is amazingly useful. Remember, most of us who do use the wiki today actually know a little about the subject we are looking up - we are usually looking for more detailed information. The kind that's hard to manufacture.
Sure, you need to cross-check the information in there with an independent source befiore betting your butt on it, but it tells you what to look for. Sure, it is almost worthless when the search term doesnt belong in a glossary of computing, gaming and communications terms, but I believe that will change. Everyone loves to be published! And those of us who contribute to it will keep a neighbourhood watch on the corpus of the wiki, if only to protect our sex-appeal...err...pride in having contributed to a reference work.
Similarly, the common man's information is visible to the TLA agencies and not the other way around - you nee dto be monitored for your own protection - remember the baby monitors? This is the adult version.
Of course it was stupid of the posters to publish what was not really public domain information, but that is a separate bowl of pickled herring altogether.
Watch as the government makes it mandatory for discussion boards to maintain logs for a much much longer time. And to edit/censor posts in real time to prevent children from pornographic material...after all the children must be secured.