Isn't the second amendment also one of the cornerstones of privacy protection?
It can be argued that the main reason to secure the right of people to bear firearms is that this is a way how they can keep their government under control. Absolute power abuses absolutely, so you want to maintain a way for the people to get rid of their government in case that turns against them (and by making sure that this uprising could happen actually provides incentive for the government to not to cross the line). But then you need to prohibit the government to take away the means by which the people could achieve this end. One of the means is to bear firearms, which is explicitly stated. However, the action of single individuals would be insufficient, you also need to insure that the people have the means to assemble without letting the government learn about their plans and go after them on that basis. Hence without a right to privacy the intent of securing the right of the people to bear firearms would be lost, hence it is implicitly implied by the second amendment that the people can not be stripped off their right to privacy.
... can be accessed here: http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0510059 . A bit less recent (but even more readable) account is http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0310342 . The first linked article also mentions the approaches featured in the slashdot post (this is an ongoing business for a while). For starters the flow diagrams in the front pages describing the options might be particularly useful.
Is there any word on how CAPTCHA decoders, like PWNtcha, perform against the current reCAPTCHA?
In case reCAPTCHA can be automatically deciphered efficiently, a slightly altered malevolent attack might still be feasible. Let D be a roughly complete list of English words (a dictionary), together with the relative frequencies of the words occurring in standard English texts. Generate a fixed mapping f from D to D such that words are going to be assigned to each other only in case their occurrence frequencies are roughly the same - ie `banana' could be mapped to `orange' since their relative frequency (I guess) is roughly the same.
Now let your deciphering program attack the reCAPTCHA service such that it guesses the two words from the presented CAPTCHA, gives the correct answer to one of them (at random), and gives the permuted answer (according to f) to the other. You will see no bumps in the frequencies, and roughly every second attempt will put in false information to the database. Since f is fixed, sooner or later the same word will come up again, in case the false answer is going to be verified.
Even without an efficient automated reCAPTCHA decipherer, you could do the same with a bunch of people, just tell them that as a first attempt always go to a website where a small cgi script gives you back f(Word) for any given Word. I'm not claiming that you can find enough evil people for that around here, of course...
((Obviously the efficiency of this attack can be increased by mapping a very common word - say, "with" - to an uncommon one, and mapping a whole bunch of uncommon words "with" so that, on the basis of relative occurrence frequencies in standard texts and the estimated ratio of malevolent/benevolent users you see no frequency bumps. The advantage of the simpler but less efficient method above is that it doesn't require a guess of the ratio of the malevolent/benevolent users.))
If all slashdotters would decide to answer with CowboyNeal to the second CAPTCHAs question, there is a large chance of his name appearing in one of the deciphered old texts. CowboyNeal to the Old Testament!
This points out one major disadvantage of the system: since the computer can't check whether the answer is correct, a large group of people can abuse it with a growing probability in time. Since there is no incentive to answer to the second CAPTCHA correctly, making it widely known that the second CAPTCHA is not checked was less than a good idea. Good cause undermined by wide publicity.
I, for one, welcome our new old-text-obfuscating slashdotter overlords.
You mentioned text editing, quick question: can you also use the iPhone together with a bluetooth keyboard, say with a Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard?
Thanks!
My Creators are, first of all, my father and my mother, and second, the People who built up the society in which I got socialized with certain cultural and moral values, with an idea of people having fundamental rights etc. None of these has anything to do with your imaginary friend. Don't credit a nonexistent metaphysical entity with a social construction for which we can be thankful for our human ancestors.
Re:One Point For Gmail
on
Gmail vs Pine
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· Score: 1
2. You still need a telnet client. Since most people don't use them there's a fair chance that some locked-down PC you try to use will let you use a web browser, but not the command line/telnet.
It the worst case, you can always use the web-based http://www.mail2web.com/ to retreive your emails from the server.
I also faced the same choice between Gmail and Pine. I stayed with Pine for an extra 6 months. Then the only reason why I switched was that I got pissed off when with an unfortunate keystroke I accidentaly erased my sent-mail folder on the linux server (6 years of sent emails are gone). Yes, this is an argument from stupidity, but sometimes it counts.
The energy consumption of wifi is roughly 3-4 times more, that means that if you decide to manage most of your talks through the wifi connection, your batteries will last for a significanly shorter time. Today the battery is already the biggest part of your mobile phone, so unless there will be a huge breakthrough in the ways we store energy, there is another reason to think (besides those that others mentioned above) that wifi-enabled phones won't completely replace regular ones.
Agree. The article contains many misunderstandings. And, by the way, the article states that he is a professor in the department of history and philosophy of science - actually, he is only an affiliated/adjunct faculty member. (I am a phd there.)
... one of the most famous Hungarian online journal, Index.hu . Whenever I see a technology news there, I know that it appeared in Slashdot four hours before.
AAP thinks that the probability of winning the case is p. C is the expected cost (the negative revenue) of the lawsuit, and R is the expected positive revenue which AAP get in case of winning.
p is very small, but R is huge compared with (the absolute value of) C. AAP calculates pR+(1-p)C and sees that it's far greater than 0.
There are several different kinds of defitinion; which one do we want to go for?
My choice is the verbal extensional definition. Planet:= {Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto}. Period.
From the FAQ: "Why did Google develop Google Secure Access?
One of our engineers recognized that secure WiFi was virtually non-existent at most locations. As a result, he used his 20% project time to begin an initiative to offer users more secure WiFi access. Google Secure Access is the result of this endeavor."
That guy would need slightly more that 20% project time to help extending the service to the entire US..
So this Queensland man called attention to websites which provide access to copyright infringing materials and haven't done the necessary steps to prevent the users from actually reaching these.
You can still reach some of the older pages of this mp3s4free website with its links in the internet archive. The internet archive would have taken it off had the Court asked them to do so. They obviously didn't. By making the judgement public the Court (indirectly) advertised the website as one providing (indirect) access to downloadable music hence encouraged people to check it whether they can still reach the the copyright infringing material throught the site via Wayback. Thus Federal Court Justice Brian Tamberlin should be sued for the same reasons he sentenced this guy.
(If it is a question whether the Court should have heard about this widely known technology it also needs to be a question whether this guy should have heard about the widely known technology of clicking on hyperlinks. Who draws the boundaries of "widely known"?)
BTW the Catholic church have seen this problem few hundred years back when they included the title of the Index - the book containing the titles of forbidden books - within the Index.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't the second amendment also one of the cornerstones of privacy protection?
It can be argued that the main reason to secure the right of people to bear firearms is that this is a way how they can keep their government under control. Absolute power abuses absolutely, so you want to maintain a way for the people to get rid of their government in case that turns against them (and by making sure that this uprising could happen actually provides incentive for the government to not to cross the line). But then you need to prohibit the government to take away the means by which the people could achieve this end. One of the means is to bear firearms, which is explicitly stated. However, the action of single individuals would be insufficient, you also need to insure that the people have the means to assemble without letting the government learn about their plans and go after them on that basis. Hence without a right to privacy the intent of securing the right of the people to bear firearms would be lost, hence it is implicitly implied by the second amendment that the people can not be stripped off their right to privacy.
... can be accessed here: http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0510059 . A bit less recent (but even more readable) account is http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0310342 . The first linked article also mentions the approaches featured in the slashdot post (this is an ongoing business for a while). For starters the flow diagrams in the front pages describing the options might be particularly useful.
Is there any word on how CAPTCHA decoders, like PWNtcha, perform against the current reCAPTCHA?
In case reCAPTCHA can be automatically deciphered efficiently, a slightly altered malevolent attack might still be feasible. Let D be a roughly complete list of English words (a dictionary), together with the relative frequencies of the words occurring in standard English texts. Generate a fixed mapping f from D to D such that words are going to be assigned to each other only in case their occurrence frequencies are roughly the same - ie `banana' could be mapped to `orange' since their relative frequency (I guess) is roughly the same.
Now let your deciphering program attack the reCAPTCHA service such that it guesses the two words from the presented CAPTCHA, gives the correct answer to one of them (at random), and gives the permuted answer (according to f) to the other. You will see no bumps in the frequencies, and roughly every second attempt will put in false information to the database. Since f is fixed, sooner or later the same word will come up again, in case the false answer is going to be verified.
Even without an efficient automated reCAPTCHA decipherer, you could do the same with a bunch of people, just tell them that as a first attempt always go to a website where a small cgi script gives you back f(Word) for any given Word. I'm not claiming that you can find enough evil people for that around here, of course...
((Obviously the efficiency of this attack can be increased by mapping a very common word - say, "with" - to an uncommon one, and mapping a whole bunch of uncommon words "with" so that, on the basis of relative occurrence frequencies in standard texts and the estimated ratio of malevolent/benevolent users you see no frequency bumps. The advantage of the simpler but less efficient method above is that it doesn't require a guess of the ratio of the malevolent/benevolent users.))
If all slashdotters would decide to answer with CowboyNeal to the second CAPTCHAs question, there is a large chance of his name appearing in one of the deciphered old texts. CowboyNeal to the Old Testament! This points out one major disadvantage of the system: since the computer can't check whether the answer is correct, a large group of people can abuse it with a growing probability in time. Since there is no incentive to answer to the second CAPTCHA correctly, making it widely known that the second CAPTCHA is not checked was less than a good idea. Good cause undermined by wide publicity. I, for one, welcome our new old-text-obfuscating slashdotter overlords.
I've just tried and Mac Excel 2007 (v 11.3.3, build 061213) calculates the values correctly. One more bonus for OS X! ;)
You mentioned text editing, quick question: can you also use the iPhone together with a bluetooth keyboard, say with a Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard? Thanks!
My Creators are, first of all, my father and my mother, and second, the People who built up the society in which I got socialized with certain cultural and moral values, with an idea of people having fundamental rights etc. None of these has anything to do with your imaginary friend. Don't credit a nonexistent metaphysical entity with a social construction for which we can be thankful for our human ancestors.
I also faced the same choice between Gmail and Pine. I stayed with Pine for an extra 6 months. Then the only reason why I switched was that I got pissed off when with an unfortunate keystroke I accidentaly erased my sent-mail folder on the linux server (6 years of sent emails are gone). Yes, this is an argument from stupidity, but sometimes it counts.
Actually, if "passed" means you get the same result for the test and for the reference page, links passed first. ;)
The energy consumption of wifi is roughly 3-4 times more, that means that if you decide to manage most of your talks through the wifi connection, your batteries will last for a significanly shorter time. Today the battery is already the biggest part of your mobile phone, so unless there will be a huge breakthrough in the ways we store energy, there is another reason to think (besides those that others mentioned above) that wifi-enabled phones won't completely replace regular ones.
Agree. The article contains many misunderstandings. And, by the way, the article states that he is a professor in the department of history and philosophy of science - actually, he is only an affiliated/adjunct faculty member. (I am a phd there.)
Here is the link for the keynote: http://macworld.apple.com.edgesuite.net/mw/index.h tml
Do you really think that there are 100,000 local libraries in this country which have Mao's book?
... one of the most famous Hungarian online journal, Index.hu . Whenever I see a technology news there, I know that it appeared in Slashdot four hours before.
"Death will die" - Aubrey de Grey.
"Aubrey de Grey will die" - Death.
AAP thinks that the probability of winning the case is p. C is the expected cost (the negative revenue) of the lawsuit, and R is the expected positive revenue which AAP get in case of winning.
p is very small, but R is huge compared with (the absolute value of) C. AAP calculates pR+(1-p)C and sees that it's far greater than 0.
AAP sues Google. End of story.
There are several different kinds of defitinion; which one do we want to go for? My choice is the verbal extensional definition. Planet := {Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto}. Period.
From the FAQ: "Why did Google develop Google Secure Access?
One of our engineers recognized that secure WiFi was virtually non-existent at most locations. As a result, he used his 20% project time to begin an initiative to offer users more secure WiFi access. Google Secure Access is the result of this endeavor."
That guy would need slightly more that 20% project time to help extending the service to the entire US..
If you want to upload files for free, use http://www.gigashare.com/ or http://www.megaupload.com/. They are much faster than uploading modified pics to Flickr. Encrypt the file if you wish.
So this Queensland man called attention to websites which provide access to copyright infringing materials and haven't done the necessary steps to prevent the users from actually reaching these.
You can still reach some of the older pages of this mp3s4free website with its links in the internet archive. The internet archive would have taken it off had the Court asked them to do so. They obviously didn't. By making the judgement public the Court (indirectly) advertised the website as one providing (indirect) access to downloadable music hence encouraged people to check it whether they can still reach the the copyright infringing material throught the site via Wayback. Thus Federal Court Justice Brian Tamberlin should be sued for the same reasons he sentenced this guy. (If it is a question whether the Court should have heard about this widely known technology it also needs to be a question whether this guy should have heard about the widely known technology of clicking on hyperlinks. Who draws the boundaries of "widely known"?)
BTW the Catholic church have seen this problem few hundred years back when they included the title of the Index - the book containing the titles of forbidden books - within the Index.