A car is a generic end-user product as well. But if the engine catches on fire because the owner hasn't changed the oil in 12 months, despite the car manual prescribing a change every 5,000, documentation from the dealer saying the same, and red blinking light in the dashboard, no one blames the engineers. The exact same thing is true of sypware and viruses - it is a well known problem, the user's companies and ISPs tell them not to open the attachments, Windows XP even issues a warning prompt, but they do it anyway.
You can engineer many problems, but you can never engineer away human idiocy. There will always be some idiot who will find a way to kill themselves with a pair of dull safety scissors.
It has been known that he DS was going to launch before Xmas for almost a year now - well before you bought your GBA SP.
You should have done some research first.
Though, take some comfort in the fact that the DS is backward compatible with all Gameboy and GBA games, so the upgrade will be smooth if and when you do.
Companies don't do market research to raise the price of in demand products, because all it would do is drive the customers away to the store that did not dothe research and therefore have lower prices.
They do it to *lower* the prices on the products during times of demand, via sales, to entice customers into the store, in hopes that along with those products they will buy other ones at full price. It is called "loss leading"
Why do you think in December stores have huge sales on Christmas trees and decorations? It is not because they are *low* in demand, that is for sure.
The tracking of buying habits anonymously benefits *everyone*.
- There are no privacy risks for the consumer - The company finds out what people like to buy and when they buy it - The company will then use this data to a) stock more of said product when it is likely to be sold, and b) Have sales on said product at that time to entice people into the store in the hopes they will buy other items.
So, the net effect is you get more of what you want, when you want it, at cheaper prices, and less of "oh, sorry, we're out of that item and there are no rainchecks" or "sorry, that sale ended yesterday".
Really, you're debunking stuff that is not even true.
As the grandparent said, on the show they *routinely* use the liver temp. And they *always* note that it is approximate. And yes, 1-2 hours *is* significanty narrowed down - if you are investigating a murder of someone who was discovere din the morning, what you need to know right away is - did this happen recently, or last night? Sure, more accuracy would be nice, but they *never* on the show imply that they know any more accurate than give or take an hour, unless they gte it form some other means, like sweat on the skin that isn't dry yet or something.
Also, they routinly use other means to estimate the time of death from corpses that are very old - yes, even with maggots. One of the people on the show plays an entomologist, and he uses the types and amounts of insect puba casings and larva to estimate the time of death to within a few weeks if the corpse is months old, or to within a few days if it is weeks old.
And yes, as someone with a background in this area this is all perfectly plausable. The show is not perfect, but give it some credit. They obviously have scientific advisors on the writing staff. Your buddys seem to me like the type of people who can't have fun watching a movie without picking it apart to feel superior. Sad.
Much larger positive side
on
Netscape Reborn?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
However there is a possible bright side to all of this. They may contribute to the project. They may find bugs that they want to fix, and they should have to contribute those fixes back to the community.
While all good, those things are *nothing8 compared to what AOL could do for Mozilla, if they truely wanted. ALl they have to do is ship Firefox as the default browser in the next AOL update, and Firefox is instantly one of the most used browsers on the internet.
Do not underestemate the huge market share AOL has. Them alone adopting Firefox would *force* all web providers to support non-IE browsers for all offerings.
What if the PIN is single-use only, because one of the two-factors is a semi-random number generator (e.g. RSA SecureID or low-tech scratch-off number sheets as used by some banks already.
And.. how many major US banks have SecurteID smart cards to access your account? Zero.
Firstly, how can a remote attacker copy your card without gaining access to it?
I already described that above. Bank cards are trivial to duplicate if you have the other persons card number and info as a reference. If you think otherwise you are deluding yourself.
What if the banks issue smart cards instead?
How does your thief copy the seed in a Java machine built into the card which handles all crypto and signing?
It doesn't matter because they don't. You have to secure yourself NOW, not in the future. That means to shred your shit and don't give out your PIN.
I stand by my original comments that banks could kill Phishing dead tomorrow if they wanted to. Every card in the marketplace expires within 2-3 years. They could replace every single one of them with a smart-card or enable some other form of two-factor (or multi-factor) authentication IF THEY WANTED TO.
s/IF THEY WANTED TO/IF IT WAS PROFITABLE FOR THEM TO DO SO and you have the truth. Until the annual cost of identity theft (to the banks, not to you) exceeds the projected cost of replacing hundreds of millions of bank cards with smart cards, they will do nothing unless required to do so by law.
What good is a person's PIN number without their card? It's useless. These guys use the scam to get your info and PIN, so that they can either go to your house and get the card info from your trash, or they can go to the bank and use your info to trick them into re-issueing your card, and pick it up.
Get a clue - identity theft had over 10 million victims in the US alone last year. Everyone is at risk.
1. That is not the kind of "two factor" authentication the parent was talking about. He was talking about the card and the PIN. I was just showing him that the card is so easily compromised for most people, that once they have the PIN, all bets are off.
2. We're not talking about CC #s, we are talking about bank cards. CC #s are even easier to steal since you don't need a PIN to use them, just a copy of the card, which you can produce using a slip.
Hey banks: All of your users have plastic cards that you issued. Mandate two-factor authentication already and watch Phishing scams go bye bye.
You obviously have no idea how these scams work. Mostly, they trick the unsuspecting user into giving out their PIN number, and name and home address. As soon as you give out your PIN, all your "two-factor" authentication is useless.
Why?? Here is why. Your bank card is absolutely trivial to duplicate.
All a theif needs is a card from the same bank (easy to obtain by simply creating an account), and a 50 dollar stripe reader/writer. They read the card, find out the format, and where the card number is stored (your account number is not on the stripe - it is associated with the card number in the bank's minaframe - this lets them easily replace your card if it is lost or stolen.),
Since they know your name and where you live, they can then just stake you out, until you go to an atm or restaurant or store with an improperly configured machine, that prints your whole card number on the slip, and not just the last few digits. They then wait for you to throw a slip away in a public trash can, and pick it up later.This is why you should NEVER throw away a debit slip in public - and if possible, shred it. (Or, at least do what I do - throw them in the kitchen trash with all the rotting meat and apples - the moisture, worms and bacteria will eat the slips up in no time.)
a) Any clothing item's RFIDs would be zapped in the dryer, or when you rub your feet on the carpet and make a spark, or a billion other potential ways.
b) Any criminals/paranoids can zap any potentiall still-working tags using a common microwave, so their value as a re-entry tracer is ***USELESS***.
c) The tags are not going to be sewn into the clothes for christ sake. You think that see-through blouse your GF owns can have a tag with metal in it without it itching her? Or even the shirt you are wearing? The tags will likely be affixed to the clothing tag with some kind of permanant fastener that will be removed at checkout, just like existing anti-shoplifting devices. Only difference is that these devices help in inventory and warehousing in addition to shoplifting.
How can something be removed from the public domain?
For example - say I took the existing GWTW text, which is in the public domain, and inserted a new paragraph, changed the name of one of the key characters everywhere in the book, and released the new text into the public domain as well. When this law is enacted, what is the status of the text? It is no longer GWTW, it is a derrivitive work - so the copyright does not belong to the original GWTW writer. And it was made a derrivitive work under a public domain work?
Fact 1 - Tags in your Passport or drivers license have absolutely *NOTHING* to do with tags at retailers.
Fact 2 - If you are SO WORRIED about a tag in your passport, nuke it for 30 seconds. Same with everything else you just described. If it is against the law to do so, I woudl suggest writing your congressperson/governor rather than ranting like a lunatic on slashdot, it will do much more good.
There is nothing wrong with the technology. RFID is going to do nothing except streamline the ordering/warehousing/shipping/purchasing process for companies, reducing their costs, and reducing your costs at the checkout counter.
No one wants to track shit all with it once it leaves the store. Do you really think Wal-mart is going to share its RFID database with Target so that Target will know what you bought there when you walk in? No - so how the hell is anyone going to track anyone with it?
Answer - they arent. The databases will not be shared, even if they were, once the stuff runs through the dryer it is fried anyways. RFID is useless for tracking anything. Privacy nuts be damned.
Nuking a tag in the microwave will break it. Running it through your electric dryer will likely break it due to static buildup. So none of your clothes have working tags, you buy a wallet maybe once every 2-3 years - so what are they "tracking you" with?!?! The TV that sits in your house 24/7 and emits so much RF that it can attract air search+rescue?
This is why all these privacy nuts are just uninformed wackos.
Yeah, thanks alot jackass - THINK PLEASE.
on
A Technical RFID Primer
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
You and the tinfoil-hat crowd will all get these jammers, and when you get to the checkout, you will likely disrupt all the item scanners within a 10 ft. radius. Meanwhile, it takes all the register-jokeys 15 minutes to sort out th problem, and I have to spend 15 minutes longer at the jumbo-mart than I had to.
If you're paranoid that the FBI is tracking you and your chiuaua, then start microwaving all your jeans at home, or go live in a cabin for all I care. But please *do not* inconvience me while I am already stressed out at the till, or you may end up with an ass whooping.
I hopethey outlaw these things in public places. It is a trivial matter to wipe any RFIDs on things you buy once you get home (most would likely get nuked during the wash anyways - do you have any idea how much static electricity your dryer makes?), so "tracking you" is hardly a goal of this crap.
I have never heard of a germ that attacks the brain. I would think such a thing would be extremely hyped by the media as the "brain flu" or something.
Have any links with more info?
This is interesting
on
Flying By Brain
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
...because I think (although I am talking out my ass here) neurons are exempt from the auto-immune response, so rejection of donor cells is a non-issue.
Slashdot Mirror
A car is a generic end-user product as well. But if the engine catches on fire because the owner hasn't changed the oil in 12 months, despite the car manual prescribing a change every 5,000, documentation from the dealer saying the same, and red blinking light in the dashboard, no one blames the engineers. The exact same thing is true of sypware and viruses - it is a well known problem, the user's companies and ISPs tell them not to open the attachments, Windows XP even issues a warning prompt, but they do it anyway.
You can engineer many problems, but you can never engineer away human idiocy. There will always be some idiot who will find a way to kill themselves with a pair of dull safety scissors.
It has been known that he DS was going to launch before Xmas for almost a year now - well before you bought your GBA SP. You should have done some research first. Though, take some comfort in the fact that the DS is backward compatible with all Gameboy and GBA games, so the upgrade will be smooth if and when you do.
Companies don't do market research to raise the price of in demand products, because all it would do is drive the customers away to the store that did not dothe research and therefore have lower prices.
They do it to *lower* the prices on the products during times of demand, via sales, to entice customers into the store, in hopes that along with those products they will buy other ones at full price. It is called "loss leading"
Why do you think in December stores have huge sales on Christmas trees and decorations? It is not because they are *low* in demand, that is for sure.
The tracking of buying habits anonymously benefits *everyone*.
- There are no privacy risks for the consumer
- The company finds out what people like to buy and when they buy it
- The company will then use this data to a) stock more of said product when it is likely to be sold, and b) Have sales on said product at that time to entice people into the store in the hopes they will buy other items.
So, the net effect is you get more of what you want, when you want it, at cheaper prices, and less of "oh, sorry, we're out of that item and there are no rainchecks" or "sorry, that sale ended yesterday".
Its how capitalism works.
Really, you're debunking stuff that is not even true.
As the grandparent said, on the show they *routinely* use the liver temp. And they *always* note that it is approximate. And yes, 1-2 hours *is* significanty narrowed down - if you are investigating a murder of someone who was discovere din the morning, what you need to know right away is - did this happen recently, or last night? Sure, more accuracy would be nice, but they *never* on the show imply that they know any more accurate than give or take an hour, unless they gte it form some other means, like sweat on the skin that isn't dry yet or something.
Also, they routinly use other means to estimate the time of death from corpses that are very old - yes, even with maggots. One of the people on the show plays an entomologist, and he uses the types and amounts of insect puba casings and larva to estimate the time of death to within a few weeks if the corpse is months old, or to within a few days if it is weeks old.
And yes, as someone with a background in this area this is all perfectly plausable. The show is not perfect, but give it some credit. They obviously have scientific advisors on the writing staff. Your buddys seem to me like the type of people who can't have fun watching a movie without picking it apart to feel superior. Sad.
However there is a possible bright side to all of this. They may contribute to the project. They may find bugs that they want to fix, and they should have to contribute those fixes back to the community.
While all good, those things are *nothing8 compared to what AOL could do for Mozilla, if they truely wanted. ALl they have to do is ship Firefox as the default browser in the next AOL update, and Firefox is instantly one of the most used browsers on the internet.
Do not underestemate the huge market share AOL has. Them alone adopting Firefox would *force* all web providers to support non-IE browsers for all offerings.
... just so you know :P
And soon you'll be able to use the Mozilla Gecko engine in Konqueror too.
You missed the S.. its SPAN and SOftware.
Oh wait.. this story is not about my Viagara order? nm....
If he is ordered to go kill some babies point-blank, he at least has the option of saying "screw that" and going through court-martial.
No chance of a conscience with a robot.
What if the PIN is single-use only, because one of the two-factors is a semi-random number generator (e.g. RSA SecureID or low-tech scratch-off number sheets as used by some banks already.
And.. how many major US banks have SecurteID smart cards to access your account? Zero.
Firstly, how can a remote attacker copy your card without gaining access to it?
I already described that above. Bank cards are trivial to duplicate if you have the other persons card number and info as a reference. If you think otherwise you are deluding yourself.
What if the banks issue smart cards instead? How does your thief copy the seed in a Java machine built into the card which handles all crypto and signing?
It doesn't matter because they don't. You have to secure yourself NOW, not in the future. That means to shred your shit and don't give out your PIN.
I stand by my original comments that banks could kill Phishing dead tomorrow if they wanted to. Every card in the marketplace expires within 2-3 years. They could replace every single one of them with a smart-card or enable some other form of two-factor (or multi-factor) authentication IF THEY WANTED TO.
s/IF THEY WANTED TO/IF IT WAS PROFITABLE FOR THEM TO DO SO and you have the truth. Until the annual cost of identity theft (to the banks, not to you) exceeds the projected cost of replacing hundreds of millions of bank cards with smart cards, they will do nothing unless required to do so by law.
This is what these fucking scams do.
What good is a person's PIN number without their card? It's useless. These guys use the scam to get your info and PIN, so that they can either go to your house and get the card info from your trash, or they can go to the bank and use your info to trick them into re-issueing your card, and pick it up.
Get a clue - identity theft had over 10 million victims in the US alone last year. Everyone is at risk.
SHRED YOUR SHIT.
1. That is not the kind of "two factor" authentication the parent was talking about. He was talking about the card and the PIN. I was just showing him that the card is so easily compromised for most people, that once they have the PIN, all bets are off.
2. We're not talking about CC #s, we are talking about bank cards. CC #s are even easier to steal since you don't need a PIN to use them, just a copy of the card, which you can produce using a slip.
Hey banks: All of your users have plastic cards that you issued. Mandate two-factor authentication already and watch Phishing scams go bye bye.
You obviously have no idea how these scams work. Mostly, they trick the unsuspecting user into giving out their PIN number, and name and home address. As soon as you give out your PIN, all your "two-factor" authentication is useless.
Why?? Here is why. Your bank card is absolutely trivial to duplicate.
All a theif needs is a card from the same bank (easy to obtain by simply creating an account), and a 50 dollar stripe reader/writer. They read the card, find out the format, and where the card number is stored (your account number is not on the stripe - it is associated with the card number in the bank's minaframe - this lets them easily replace your card if it is lost or stolen.),
Since they know your name and where you live, they can then just stake you out, until you go to an atm or restaurant or store with an improperly configured machine, that prints your whole card number on the slip, and not just the last few digits. They then wait for you to throw a slip away in a public trash can, and pick it up later.This is why you should NEVER throw away a debit slip in public - and if possible, shred it. (Or, at least do what I do - throw them in the kitchen trash with all the rotting meat and apples - the moisture, worms and bacteria will eat the slips up in no time.)
Once again....
a) Any clothing item's RFIDs would be zapped in the dryer, or when you rub your feet on the carpet and make a spark, or a billion other potential ways.
b) Any criminals/paranoids can zap any potentiall still-working tags using a common microwave, so their value as a re-entry tracer is ***USELESS***.
c) The tags are not going to be sewn into the clothes for christ sake. You think that see-through blouse your GF owns can have a tag with metal in it without it itching her? Or even the shirt you are wearing? The tags will likely be affixed to the clothing tag with some kind of permanant fastener that will be removed at checkout, just like existing anti-shoplifting devices. Only difference is that these devices help in inventory and warehousing in addition to shoplifting.
c)
How can something be removed from the public domain?
For example - say I took the existing GWTW text, which is in the public domain, and inserted a new paragraph, changed the name of one of the key characters everywhere in the book, and released the new text into the public domain as well. When this law is enacted, what is the status of the text? It is no longer GWTW, it is a derrivitive work - so the copyright does not belong to the original GWTW writer. And it was made a derrivitive work under a public domain work?
Any lawyers care to explain?
Fact 1 - Tags in your Passport or drivers license have absolutely *NOTHING* to do with tags at retailers.
Fact 2 - If you are SO WORRIED about a tag in your passport, nuke it for 30 seconds. Same with everything else you just described. If it is against the law to do so, I woudl suggest writing your congressperson/governor rather than ranting like a lunatic on slashdot, it will do much more good.
There is nothing wrong with the technology. RFID is going to do nothing except streamline the ordering/warehousing/shipping/purchasing process for companies, reducing their costs, and reducing your costs at the checkout counter.
No one wants to track shit all with it once it leaves the store. Do you really think Wal-mart is going to share its RFID database with Target so that Target will know what you bought there when you walk in? No - so how the hell is anyone going to track anyone with it?
Answer - they arent. The databases will not be shared, even if they were, once the stuff runs through the dryer it is fried anyways. RFID is useless for tracking anything. Privacy nuts be damned.
The VB UI was just one window, with toolboxes. Sure these were detachable, but they were not by default.
This thing looks like the old Gimp 1.x UI monstrosity, with 29340284309 windows everywhere.
Nuking a tag in the microwave will break it. Running it through your electric dryer will likely break it due to static buildup. So none of your clothes have working tags, you buy a wallet maybe once every 2-3 years - so what are they "tracking you" with?!?! The TV that sits in your house 24/7 and emits so much RF that it can attract air search+rescue?
This is why all these privacy nuts are just uninformed wackos.
You and the tinfoil-hat crowd will all get these jammers, and when you get to the checkout, you will likely disrupt all the item scanners within a 10 ft. radius. Meanwhile, it takes all the register-jokeys 15 minutes to sort out th problem, and I have to spend 15 minutes longer at the jumbo-mart than I had to.
If you're paranoid that the FBI is tracking you and your chiuaua, then start microwaving all your jeans at home, or go live in a cabin for all I care. But please *do not* inconvience me while I am already stressed out at the till, or you may end up with an ass whooping.
I hopethey outlaw these things in public places. It is a trivial matter to wipe any RFIDs on things you buy once you get home (most would likely get nuked during the wash anyways - do you have any idea how much static electricity your dryer makes?), so "tracking you" is hardly a goal of this crap.
It is a Prion disease.
I have never heard of a germ that attacks the brain. I would think such a thing would be extremely hyped by the media as the "brain flu" or something.
Have any links with more info?
...because I think (although I am talking out my ass here) neurons are exempt from the auto-immune response, so rejection of donor cells is a non-issue.
If you know, is this true?
WTF is that?
Your computer can also re-produce Beethoven's 9th, "perfectly", as many times as you want.
That is not the same an orchestra performing it.
Some things are just cooler in analong.