Robots are faster than humans at a lot of things, but up until now running hasn't been one of them. That is set to change with robotics company Boston Dynamics recently awarded a contract by DARPA to design and build a quadraped CHEETAH robot that is faster than any human. The contract also includes the creation of an agile, bipedal humanoid robot. It's hard to say which one might ultimately be creepier.
OK... a company with a name like Boston Dynamics, working with DARPA building robotic quadriped runners, am I the only one who thinks Fringe? Are they into cybernetics, biotechnology and space/time manipulation as well?
Actually, it's not so hard as that -- it's just that using the retina approach is extremely difficult. The trick is that the watermark is a static image overlaid over 30fps of images. If the watermark is translucent, you're almost home free. If it's fully opaque, you have to do some interpolation based on pixel reflection (if it's live photo capture -- this method won't work for synthetic images). Even though you can't see what's behind the logo, you can see what effect that area of space has had on those around it (assuming lossy compression hasn't warped the reflective properties and eaten all the artifacts).
So, if you apply a "healing brush" style replacement to each frame and a FF transform between frames for FEC, then do a pixel reflection analysis to the area pre and post edit, you can usually uncover an approximation of the original image -- it might be blurry in a single frame, but over 30 frames you end up with the image magically healing with only a slight smudgy ghost effect revealing itself from time to time.
From the article, it appears that the new system allows them to run the same airspace with fewer employees, cutting operational costs.
So for the owners, there is much go gain from implementing the new system, assuming it works as well as the old one. Even with a few contractors, it's probably cheaper.
Interestingly, the iPad has handwriting recognition built-in -- but I have yet to see any way to access it. It's one of those things Apple absorbed into OS X from the old Newton OS, and is still in both the OS X and iOS codebases AFAIK. I don't know why Apple hasn't enabled it on iOS though; you can use it on OS X if you've got a tablet attached.
To expand on your point: file management on the iPad is App-centric. I use an app called SuperFiles that can connect to mobileMe, Drobpox, FTP, SFTP, Google Docs, Picasa, iCloud, SwissDisk, myDisk, myDrive, generic webDAV, Flickr, gMail, generic HTTP and Bluetooth FTP.
This app also has access to all my photos, my media library and a local App-specific filestore.
It can also send documents to any other App that has registered that filetype with the OS.
With all these options for file storage available wirelessly, USB-based file access isn't really necessary.
That said, since Apple is planning to release GarageBand and iTunes for the iPad, this might come up against a storage access performance wall pretty quickly. I'll be interested to see what they do about this.
Back in the day I had some 3.5" floppy disks that were HD. That was 1.44 MegaBYTES! You'd think that when they set the new standard they'd at least use the same data size instead of one that's half the capacity (that was just called "double sided" or MD back then).
Interesting point of reflection though... you can fit two (TWO) HD stills on an HD 3.5" floppy disk! Assuming 30fps, that's... 1/15th of a second of video!
I think I personally agree with every point you made... well done!
Background checks are my biggest pain point... because of the privacy laws here, I need to renew my checks every 2 years -- for EACH place that requires a certain level rating. This means that I'm pretty well known at the local constabulary, as I have to keep coming in and filling out the SAME FORMS for different agencies.
either HBGary Federal was a setup being used to push paranoia, or Anonymous faked some of the emails to support their own agenda.
...or they were a small-time security company trying to make it big by turning to the dark side in a "legal" manner.
Remember -- when you're dealing with corporations and governments at this level, "4 person company" is pretty much meaningless -- the companies are usually "consulting" companies who pull in "contractors" who have "clearance". It's called covering their personal liability just in case something goes wrong. This is actually the kind of group large corporations and governments routinely like to work with, as the company can always be the scapegoat should anything go wrong, and the actual players can disband and re-form with minimal liability (all the "contractors" who work for these companies are one step removed, so don't have any bad press or liability sticking to them at all).
It's always going to be a bit too convenient, because this kind of setup is convenient, and happens constantly.
Oh, and despite what you're saying, nobody has denied the emails and a number of people have made tracks to distance themselves from the emails. The Congressional side of all this is neither here nor there -- if they hadn't got their hands on this situation, they would have found something else similar (because when you go on a fishing expedition, you're likely going to find mud).
First: Social Security doesn't have biometric data tied to it, or anything else other than Federal information. Driver's Licenses are only tied to State activities, and Passports are only tied to International activities. The Federal government wants access to ALL that information, without having to ask those who currently control it to provide it. They want to be able to cross-reference those PII markers.
Second: Illegal Immigrants can still get identity cards. Strange, yes... but true. The government wants to be able to ID illegal immigrants just as easily as they can ID citizens.
People care because they know that any government will misuse information if given the chance. One branch of government has access to your PII for a specific purpose, another branch has access to other pieces of PII for another specific purpose. When the government as a whole has de-facto access to ALL your PII, they truly own you, and have significantly more power over you than was originally granted. The assumption (which is time and again proven to be correct) is that this will breed misuse of information and corruption in government.
This mindset holds true more in republics which stand on limited government of a free people. Socialist leaning countries (most of the western world) place government in a different role with different safeguards designed to match the assigned role. In a (modern) socialist government, the government having de-facto access to all PII isn't as big of an issue, as there are other mechanisms in place to prevent at least casual abuse.
This is a simplistic explanation, but I hope it gets the point across. If you don't mind the government running your life, then don't worry about it.
Are you planning on going off-grid, or the sneakier method of using faked fingerprints for registration?
(if #2, just remember to keep your fakes on hand when you need them)
Seems to me it should be fairly easy to take a print mold of your own prints, modify them, then keep those inverted moulds. When you want to change prints, take some quick drying glue (Krazy Glue over here) and apply to finger tips, then press into your print mould.
As the prints will only last a few days and aren't your default ones, they act as "something you have" instead of "something you are", thus protecting your identity while giving you expected freedoms.
I wonder if countries have requirements on the state of your fingers when you get fingerprinted?
No, at this point it's called "having sent the dead horse to the glue factory, we're now after the people who sold it to us (who still have money) misrepresented as a living horse."
Bzzt. By at least giving nothing more to the banks you come out less behind than you would have. You escape the raised prices by living in a credit card-free society. OR, you escape the raised prices by shopping local, paying cash, and having the extra money go to your local business who then in turn has more money to spend on what YOU are selling, without the money being siphoned out of the local economy to be hoarded by credit companies/banks.
That said, I pay plastic for everything, because I admit that I live in a global economy (and the credit card companies have been my customers on multiple occasions);)
They also make money by selling your purchase history to third parties.
As for the charging less for cash, banks, credit card companies and credit processing companies all get a cut when you pay plastic, and the merchant isn't officially allowed to adjust their price for credit payment. To get around this, some companies add in bonuses for cash purchases. I usually see this at import/export companies, specialty stores, and tech stores.
For that matter, I've also seen this for online payments (PayPal for instance will take a cut off the top if you receive payment via credit card). Many people get around this by charging more for "shipping and handling" if you pay by credit card.
This doesn't take into account the actual/guidelines/ which state that open is clearly strongly preferred, but closed is fine if there is no equal open alternative.
Looks like the lobbyists are playing snake to the government's apple.
3. You are omniscient and avoid running afoul due to ignorance.
No matter how ethically you behave, if someone wants to nail you to the wall because they don't like you, they can probably dig up something you've failed to do -- some tax law you fail to meet, some paper you failed to sign before you did something, some place you happened to be that you didn't know you shouldn't be, etc.
Also, in some countries, you can get in trouble for failing to pay bribes. I consider bribes unethical. See the problem? Of course, neither of these run afoul of the "actively hiding" clause -- they depend on the "ignorantly hiding" clause. But once you realize that the only reason you're not in trouble is because you failed to disclose something, do you disclose it (acting ethically) and pay the penalty (no longer being safe), or do you hide it (no longer acting ethically) and fly under the radar?
Ethics are social. This world has many societies, and they aren't all compatible.
Hey, for a historical example, Jesus was killed because he was condemning the unethical acts of the Jewish elite. They accused him of things he readily admitted to (as well as a bunch of lies) that were punishable by their law by death by stoning. Of course, if they'd followed that law (ethical to them) then they would have been guilty of murder under Roman law -- Romans considering stoning both unethical and illegal.
Those who are truly willing to live by their ethical code have to be willing to die by it. They are by no means "safe".
He is no more a "victim" than someone who buys an overpriced set of brittle dull steak knives from a late night infomercial because they showed them cutting through bricks and he fell for it.
I'd say he's a bit more of a victim than that... unless when he complained about the knives, they offered to exchange them for a $200,000 restocking fee.
The one that came to my mind had more to do with Monster cables.... an area where people routinely get bilked out of $200,000 with one exception... they never realize they've been duped!
Gmail's reliability is much better than what you would expect for a free service.
That's because it isn't free... you and your email aren't the customer, you're the goods being sold. This means they survive and prosper on their valuable property (you) being presented in a reliable and uncorrupted manner to their customers. Thus, they have both the incentive and the reach to do things at a level an individual could never compete with. Of course, it also means that you sell them some of your privacy to reap the benefits of this situation.
Whether this is a win or a lose depends on the person's perspective, I guess.
That's because the ones from China aren't usually bots. I set up a script that runs an uncloaked nmap whenever the attempted ssh logons from a single IP hits a threshold; the attempts from India and Brazil just keep on pounding away until they're done, but the ones from China stop within 10 seconds of the start of my nmap probe.
And watch the hypocrisy in the parent post, which fails to realize that virus and drive-by exploits are not the same thing as a trojan.
No matter how secure you make your OS, as long as the user can override things, trojans will exist.
The only way to have a system 100% secure is to have the OS and all the programs in ROM. Not flash with limited write access... that's a security risk. You need ROM.
I've seen plenty of insecure systems implemented in ROM. And the downside is that you need to re-flash the ROM in order to fix the holes. If it's not software-flashable, this can be a bit painful (UV-wipe and re-program, or toss and swap)....
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OK... a company with a name like Boston Dynamics, working with DARPA building robotic quadriped runners, am I the only one who thinks Fringe? Are they into cybernetics, biotechnology and space/time manipulation as well?
Actually, it's not so hard as that -- it's just that using the retina approach is extremely difficult. The trick is that the watermark is a static image overlaid over 30fps of images. If the watermark is translucent, you're almost home free. If it's fully opaque, you have to do some interpolation based on pixel reflection (if it's live photo capture -- this method won't work for synthetic images). Even though you can't see what's behind the logo, you can see what effect that area of space has had on those around it (assuming lossy compression hasn't warped the reflective properties and eaten all the artifacts).
So, if you apply a "healing brush" style replacement to each frame and a FF transform between frames for FEC, then do a pixel reflection analysis to the area pre and post edit, you can usually uncover an approximation of the original image -- it might be blurry in a single frame, but over 30 frames you end up with the image magically healing with only a slight smudgy ghost effect revealing itself from time to time.
From the article, it appears that the new system allows them to run the same airspace with fewer employees, cutting operational costs.
So for the owners, there is much go gain from implementing the new system, assuming it works as well as the old one. Even with a few contractors, it's probably cheaper.
Interestingly, the iPad has handwriting recognition built-in -- but I have yet to see any way to access it. It's one of those things Apple absorbed into OS X from the old Newton OS, and is still in both the OS X and iOS codebases AFAIK. I don't know why Apple hasn't enabled it on iOS though; you can use it on OS X if you've got a tablet attached.
To expand on your point: file management on the iPad is App-centric. I use an app called SuperFiles that can connect to mobileMe, Drobpox, FTP, SFTP, Google Docs, Picasa, iCloud, SwissDisk, myDisk, myDrive, generic webDAV, Flickr, gMail, generic HTTP and Bluetooth FTP.
This app also has access to all my photos, my media library and a local App-specific filestore.
It can also send documents to any other App that has registered that filetype with the OS.
With all these options for file storage available wirelessly, USB-based file access isn't really necessary.
That said, since Apple is planning to release GarageBand and iTunes for the iPad, this might come up against a storage access performance wall pretty quickly. I'll be interested to see what they do about this.
Back in the day I had some 3.5" floppy disks that were HD. That was 1.44 MegaBYTES! You'd think that when they set the new standard they'd at least use the same data size instead of one that's half the capacity (that was just called "double sided" or MD back then).
Interesting point of reflection though... you can fit two (TWO) HD stills on an HD 3.5" floppy disk! Assuming 30fps, that's... 1/15th of a second of video!
These days, pretty much anything that isn't a virus or a worm but is malicious is dumped into the trojan bin.
I think I personally agree with every point you made... well done!
Background checks are my biggest pain point... because of the privacy laws here, I need to renew my checks every 2 years -- for EACH place that requires a certain level rating. This means that I'm pretty well known at the local constabulary, as I have to keep coming in and filling out the SAME FORMS for different agencies.
The entire idea of cheering or shunning anon is kind of odd to me; no two "cyber" flash mobs are the same makeup.
Now, the activities conducted under the anon umbrella are a different issue....
...and the answer is that that's what the readership wants.
either HBGary Federal was a setup being used to push paranoia, or Anonymous faked some of the emails to support their own agenda.
...or they were a small-time security company trying to make it big by turning to the dark side in a "legal" manner.
Remember -- when you're dealing with corporations and governments at this level, "4 person company" is pretty much meaningless -- the companies are usually "consulting" companies who pull in "contractors" who have "clearance". It's called covering their personal liability just in case something goes wrong. This is actually the kind of group large corporations and governments routinely like to work with, as the company can always be the scapegoat should anything go wrong, and the actual players can disband and re-form with minimal liability (all the "contractors" who work for these companies are one step removed, so don't have any bad press or liability sticking to them at all).
It's always going to be a bit too convenient, because this kind of setup is convenient, and happens constantly.
Oh, and despite what you're saying, nobody has denied the emails and a number of people have made tracks to distance themselves from the emails. The Congressional side of all this is neither here nor there -- if they hadn't got their hands on this situation, they would have found something else similar (because when you go on a fishing expedition, you're likely going to find mud).
First: Social Security doesn't have biometric data tied to it, or anything else other than Federal information. Driver's Licenses are only tied to State activities, and Passports are only tied to International activities. The Federal government wants access to ALL that information, without having to ask those who currently control it to provide it. They want to be able to cross-reference those PII markers.
Second: Illegal Immigrants can still get identity cards. Strange, yes... but true. The government wants to be able to ID illegal immigrants just as easily as they can ID citizens.
People care because they know that any government will misuse information if given the chance. One branch of government has access to your PII for a specific purpose, another branch has access to other pieces of PII for another specific purpose. When the government as a whole has de-facto access to ALL your PII, they truly own you, and have significantly more power over you than was originally granted. The assumption (which is time and again proven to be correct) is that this will breed misuse of information and corruption in government.
This mindset holds true more in republics which stand on limited government of a free people. Socialist leaning countries (most of the western world) place government in a different role with different safeguards designed to match the assigned role. In a (modern) socialist government, the government having de-facto access to all PII isn't as big of an issue, as there are other mechanisms in place to prevent at least casual abuse.
This is a simplistic explanation, but I hope it gets the point across. If you don't mind the government running your life, then don't worry about it.
Bye bye legal identity.
Are you planning on going off-grid, or the sneakier method of using faked fingerprints for registration?
(if #2, just remember to keep your fakes on hand when you need them)
Seems to me it should be fairly easy to take a print mold of your own prints, modify them, then keep those inverted moulds. When you want to change prints, take some quick drying glue (Krazy Glue over here) and apply to finger tips, then press into your print mould.
As the prints will only last a few days and aren't your default ones, they act as "something you have" instead of "something you are", thus protecting your identity while giving you expected freedoms.
I wonder if countries have requirements on the state of your fingers when you get fingerprinted?
No, at this point it's called "having sent the dead horse to the glue factory, we're now after the people who sold it to us (who still have money) misrepresented as a living horse."
(much better than a car analogy)
Bzzt. By at least giving nothing more to the banks you come out less behind than you would have. You escape the raised prices by living in a credit card-free society. OR, you escape the raised prices by shopping local, paying cash, and having the extra money go to your local business who then in turn has more money to spend on what YOU are selling, without the money being siphoned out of the local economy to be hoarded by credit companies/banks.
That said, I pay plastic for everything, because I admit that I live in a global economy (and the credit card companies have been my customers on multiple occasions) ;)
They also make money by selling your purchase history to third parties.
As for the charging less for cash, banks, credit card companies and credit processing companies all get a cut when you pay plastic, and the merchant isn't officially allowed to adjust their price for credit payment. To get around this, some companies add in bonuses for cash purchases. I usually see this at import/export companies, specialty stores, and tech stores.
For that matter, I've also seen this for online payments (PayPal for instance will take a cut off the top if you receive payment via credit card). Many people get around this by charging more for "shipping and handling" if you pay by credit card.
This doesn't take into account the actual /guidelines/ which state that open is clearly strongly preferred, but closed is fine if there is no equal open alternative.
Looks like the lobbyists are playing snake to the government's apple.
3. You are omniscient and avoid running afoul due to ignorance.
No matter how ethically you behave, if someone wants to nail you to the wall because they don't like you, they can probably dig up something you've failed to do -- some tax law you fail to meet, some paper you failed to sign before you did something, some place you happened to be that you didn't know you shouldn't be, etc.
Also, in some countries, you can get in trouble for failing to pay bribes. I consider bribes unethical. See the problem?
Of course, neither of these run afoul of the "actively hiding" clause -- they depend on the "ignorantly hiding" clause. But once you realize that the only reason you're not in trouble is because you failed to disclose something, do you disclose it (acting ethically) and pay the penalty (no longer being safe), or do you hide it (no longer acting ethically) and fly under the radar?
Ethics are social. This world has many societies, and they aren't all compatible.
Hey, for a historical example, Jesus was killed because he was condemning the unethical acts of the Jewish elite. They accused him of things he readily admitted to (as well as a bunch of lies) that were punishable by their law by death by stoning. Of course, if they'd followed that law (ethical to them) then they would have been guilty of murder under Roman law -- Romans considering stoning both unethical and illegal.
Those who are truly willing to live by their ethical code have to be willing to die by it. They are by no means "safe".
He is no more a "victim" than someone who buys an overpriced set of brittle dull steak knives from a late night infomercial because they showed them cutting through bricks and he fell for it.
I'd say he's a bit more of a victim than that... unless when he complained about the knives, they offered to exchange them for a $200,000 restocking fee.
The one that came to my mind had more to do with Monster cables.... an area where people routinely get bilked out of $200,000 with one exception... they never realize they've been duped!
After all that, I'd think you would have read the one by Melville....
Gmail's reliability is much better than what you would expect for a free service.
That's because it isn't free... you and your email aren't the customer, you're the goods being sold. This means they survive and prosper on their valuable property (you) being presented in a reliable and uncorrupted manner to their customers. Thus, they have both the incentive and the reach to do things at a level an individual could never compete with. Of course, it also means that you sell them some of your privacy to reap the benefits of this situation.
Whether this is a win or a lose depends on the person's perspective, I guess.
That's because the ones from China aren't usually bots.
I set up a script that runs an uncloaked nmap whenever the attempted ssh logons from a single IP hits a threshold; the attempts from India and Brazil just keep on pounding away until they're done, but the ones from China stop within 10 seconds of the start of my nmap probe.
They've been blocking port 25 in problem areas since 2004; AFAIK, they only block when they've got a reported problem (by their definition).
Agreed :)
And watch the hypocrisy in the parent post, which fails to realize that virus and drive-by exploits are not the same thing as a trojan.
No matter how secure you make your OS, as long as the user can override things, trojans will exist.
The only way to have a system 100% secure is to have the OS and all the programs in ROM. Not flash with limited write access... that's a security risk. You need ROM.
I've seen plenty of insecure systems implemented in ROM. And the downside is that you need to re-flash the ROM in order to fix the holes. If it's not software-flashable, this can be a bit painful (UV-wipe and re-program, or toss and swap)....