I bought my son a DSi when I was in Hong Kong last March. It's a pretty impressive piece of hardware for something that inexpensive, and it makes a wonderful educational platform because of the touch screen. I can see the DSi mark 2 or so supporting GSM and being able to work as a video phone. It already has two cameras - one facing the user and one facing away - that would make it ideal for video phone calls so the person on the other end can see you and then you can say "Hey... look at this..." and just toggle to the other camera while keeping all of the controls where you can access them.
About 2/3 of the "games" we have for the DS family of devices are educational, and they work. The kids use them and the material is "taking" - they're learning it. I know, there are other ways to study and learn, but when you have a very kinesthetic learner (hands-on, moving, etc.) on your hands doing something where you need to interact physically with something during the learning process helps.
The DS could be a pretty darn good PDA if they'd make the calendar a little less lame, add handwriting recognition and an address book, an a few other things. The dual-screen interface has its advantages, too.
I can understand your frustration, but I hope I can offer some encouragement, too.
Yes, there is a significant difference between the academic and practical sides of things, and they each have their place. I may be biased here, but I feel that the best position is to have one foot firmly in each realm. I work full-time in infosec and I am a part-time university professor (with a Ph.D. in infosec), so I bridge that gap, bringing my practical real-world experience to my students and bringing the benefits of the academic world to my full-time employer.
There are universities with faculty who have practical experience and are willing to share that experience and understanding with anyone they feel they can trust. It's a judgement call, and people make mistakes on both ends. Sometimes, a well-intentioned and capable individual is passed by because the one with the knowlege is not sure if the individual can be trusted, and other times someone with malicious intent is trained.
The information is out there. You can find it from people who know and who are willing to teach or you can find it on your own through experimentation.
Do not give up. You will find the knowlege you seek if you persist.
I agree. Why is this controversial? Other than the fact that they're opening the doors to "all comers", it sounds very much like the "capture the flag" competition on the last day of the "Hacker Tools and Incident Response" course that I took in San Jose a year or two ago.
SANS organizes similar events at their larger conferences. The difference is that it's open.
I also agree with those who have stated that the DoD culture is not exactly in sync with the culture of those who can do this sort of thing. I was one of a very small number of "academics" (university infosec professors) who attended the DoD cyber crime conference in St. Louis this year and it was pretty clear that the DoD folks are reaching out for help and are not quite sure how to reach out to the academic community. It was an interesting conference, but much of what was presented by the DoD folks as "leading edge" was stuff I encountered years ago while working on my dissertation.
I am a Notary Public here in SC, and at least in SC what you stated is correct. All a Notary does is verify someone's identity and witness statements made by the individual, either clearly written or implied. (e.g. when selling a vehicle, you are implying that you are the individual named on the title as the owner and not someone else who happens to have the same name. A notary will check the name on the ID against the name on the title and then ask the "seller" to verify that he or she is the same person.)
There are serious penalties for faking a notary seal/signature, either forging one of a real notary or making a fake seal and pretending to be a notary. Technically, Notaries Public are considered officers of the court. (I say "technically" because that's the way the laws are written, but I doubt you'd receive the same penalties for assaulting a notary as you would for assaulting a judge, magistrate, clerk, or a bailiff, for example.)
(an interesting side note: the controversial "education lottery" law in SC has some strange provisions, including the fact that certain persons in "positions of trust" such as officers of the court cannot legally play the lottery. Therefore, notaries, judges, cops, and elected officials are not allowed to play the lottery.)
The captcha is "extort". I'm sure there is some significance in there somewhere that I am not seeing yet.
Winston Smith, a loyal worker in the Ministry of Truth, clearly denies these allegations. "There is no need for such a capability, because history never changes."
By the way, Comrade Dimedici, some employees from MiniLove will be arriving shortly to escort you to Room 101.
I agree with your overall assessment of South Carolina, having lived here for the past 15 years. There are clearly cultural issues that need to be overcome before any education initiative will be effective here.
South Carolina is strangely bipolar when it comes to education. The majority of the public schools seem to exist to maintain the status quo, teach to the PACT(1) test (or whatever its replacement is called), and keep the teachers employed through whatever means are leagal. South Carolina spends a very high percentage of taxes on education (as shown on the tax bills for property taxes as well as explained in state income tax booklets) yet we have some of the worst schools in the country. Apparently, Inez Tennebaum, our Secretary of Education for far too long, was publicly ridiculed on TV for her failures and she honestly thought she was doing a good job. Pretty sad, IMHO.
However, South Carolina also has some interesting charter schools - the good ones (e.g. Blythe Academy of Languages in Greenville) are in the wealthier neighbourhoods (no surprises there). There has been a large number of "online" charter schools lately. Unfortunately, the one we experienced with our son was run as effectively as a regular South Carolina public school. (In other words, it was pathetic.) I teach in an on-line program as well as on-campus at a large university, and I thought that the on-line charter school would be a good idea. I still think it could be, if done correctly.
There are many private schools in SC, catering to the wealthy. Some of them have tutions that are more than the state universities. (Surprisingly, some of the state universities in SC are very good, such as Clemson University and the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.)
Homeschooling is tolerated, barely. The majority of homeschoolers I have encountered do it for religious, rather than academic, reasons. We homeschool for academic reasons becasuse the SC schools are so bad. It is against SC law to segregate students (at least in the lower grades) by ability because someone decided it was discriminatory due to the fact that there were disproportionally fewer minority students in the advanced classes. Therefore, rather than look for a reason _why_ there were fewer minority students in the advanced classes they just decided that the practice of allowing gifted students to work at a more challenging pace without being held back by average students was racial discrimination.
I doubt those laptops will go anywhere but to public school kids.
(1) PAlmetto Achievement Test - the state created exam given to children every few years with the reported purpose of determining how well the schools are doing. Unfortunately, the teachers teach to the test instead of educating the children.
I find it interesting that the CAPTCHA for this post is "converse", which, beside its usual meaning, happens to be the name of a very good private all-women's college (Converse College) in Spartanburg, SC.
The patterns are better because you KNOW what is happening. I do computer forensics work as part of my day job.
While the chances are very, very slim, it is possible that a "random" wipe could write the exact same 1111 1111 or 0000 0000 every time to the same area. Also, how random is your random source?
Recovering anything from a drive wiped with
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda
requires highly specialized hardware and training - not what your average criminal will have handy (especially the hardware).
Governments, OTOH, may indeed have that hardware, though the "official" story is that modern hard drives have such high data density on the platters that doing a/dev/zero wipe as shown above would render the disk completely unreadable. Keep in mind that those DOD standards were created back when drives had MUCH lower data densities.
Personally, I like the sandblasting suggestion that someone else posted. That should do it - that or a vat of acid.
However, if you want to be able to use the drive again,/dev/zero should do the trick.
Does North Korea even HAVE Amateur Radio operators?
This is right next to the 70cm band, and I know that my 70cm hand-held can receive on this frequency. Anyone with a fairly standard amateur "satellite" rig should be able to pick this up easily enough, though.
I _really_ wish I had the proper hardware to listen in on this one - I don't have a good enough directional antenna to pick up the transmissions.
It should be fairly easy for someone with the proper hardware to determine if there is something up there that matches the description of what the DPRK government stated, since there are a large number of amateur radio operators who do this sort of thing frequently.
The iPod Touch is great for all sorts of things, but trying to use the handwriting recognition is a real pain. I normally write with a pen or pencil, so a stylus is a "natural" substitute - it feels very much like a pen or pencil, but works on the touch screen. I can do that with my Windows Mobile device, but not with my iPod Touch.
I know about the stylus at ThinkGeek. I don't have one yet, and the price is a bit too high in my opinion for a stylus.
The Japanese word transliterated "kawaii" is usually translated "cute" in dictionaries, and is composed of two kanji (borrowed Chinese characters), the first meaning "to be able to, to be allowed to" and the second meaning "to love" or "love". The Chinese word written the same way (ke3 ai4) is also translated as "cute" and the implied meaning from the order of the characters/words is "loveable".
Yes, that would most likely be the word used by Japanese tweenies and teenaged (and even older) ladies. Just remember, this is the nation and culture that brought us "Hello Kitty".
I don't know about malware in QQ's software, but QQ is much more than just China's answer to Microsoft Messenger.
QQ is a portal site that links to search engines and also provides users a place to create their "home" on the Internet, much like live.com and other sites.
Yes, QQ is insanely popular in China, as is MSN and Yahoo! chat.
I have the pleasure (due to my Ph.D. in InfoSec) of being on my senator's "short list" of experts whom his office will consult on such matters. I will keep you posted. I should be receiving a phone call with a day.
The Mini-USB has been the standard in China for a while now according to my friends who live there. It's really nice, because it makes finding chargers and ear-phone adapters easy, unlike here in the USA.
Can we start a list of SciFi "made up" profanities that we can keep on tap in case SC (where I live, unfortunately) actually manages to pass this smeg?
Please provide references as shown above for the new vocabulary. Bonus points if anyone can provide the translations used in other languages.
That is exactly Brasil's policy: they require of a country's citizens whatever that country requires of Brasil's citizens.
If the USA requires Brasilians to register 72 hours in advance of visiting the USA, it won't take long before Brasil requires US citizens to register 72 hours in advance of visiting Brasil.
I think it's fair.
The only problem is that these politicians somehow either don't understand or are exempt from these procedures.
Your reference to the "Chinese curse" (there's some debate on the real origins of it) "May you live in interesting times." is actually more "interesting" than you may think.
The phrase in Chinese that is most commonly translated as "interesting" is made of two words (three characters): you3 yi4 si. I won't try to imbed Chinese characters here.
you3 means "to have", as in "I have a car". yi4 si means "significance" or "meaning", for example, it is used to ask what a word means.
So, a slightly more literal translation would be "May you live in significant times."
To me, that's more frightening than "interesting times".
Your question is valid, and I hope that I will be able to answer it adequately.
You are correct. We have a secret ballot system here in the USA and except under very specific circumstances (disability and absentee ballots), no-one should be able to know how any other individual voted unless the voter volunteers the information.
Given that, however, there are way to obtain fairly reliable (within a small margin of error, statistically speaking) estimates of such matters.
The first is that many, if not all, states require race information on voter registration. This is intended to aid in proper identification at polling places. Date of birth and address are included at least on my state's registration card, so these data can be cross-checked with a photo ID such as a driver's license.
Given that voter race information is available to the voter registration board for individuals, aggregate information (x% white, y% African American, z% Hispanic, etc) is made available to the media for analysis based on each precinct.
There are many precincts that are mostly African American.
By examining precinct-by-precinct results it is possible to obtain a broad estimate when there are precincts that are largly one race or another.
That, in and of itself, does not give the 97% figure.
The 97% figure is based on exit polls and is supported by the by-precinct results when compared with the racial demographics of the precincts.
Yes, people can lie on exit polls. Yes, people can refuse to answer. However, this is the best we can do.
So, you are correct, I do not KNOW. However, there is a preponderance of evidence, also supported by the fact that the media are pushing these numbers, that support the 97% figure, give or take a few percentage points.
Slashdot Mirror
I bought my son a DSi when I was in Hong Kong last March. It's a pretty impressive piece of hardware for something that inexpensive, and it makes a wonderful educational platform because of the touch screen. I can see the DSi mark 2 or so supporting GSM and being able to work as a video phone. It already has two cameras - one facing the user and one facing away - that would make it ideal for video phone calls so the person on the other end can see you and then you can say "Hey... look at this..." and just toggle to the other camera while keeping all of the controls where you can access them.
About 2/3 of the "games" we have for the DS family of devices are educational, and they work. The kids use them and the material is "taking" - they're learning it. I know, there are other ways to study and learn, but when you have a very kinesthetic learner (hands-on, moving, etc.) on your hands doing something where you need to interact physically with something during the learning process helps.
The DS could be a pretty darn good PDA if they'd make the calendar a little less lame, add handwriting recognition and an address book, an a few other things. The dual-screen interface has its advantages, too.
Barbie said that "Math class is tough!" (often misquoted as "math is hard.")
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/21/business/company-news-mattel-says-it-erred-teen-talk-barbie-turns-silent-on-math.html
It's funny how these inaccurate stereotypes find their way into the stranges places.
I can understand your frustration, but I hope I can offer some encouragement, too.
Yes, there is a significant difference between the academic and practical sides of things, and they each have their place. I may be biased here, but I feel that the best position is to have one foot firmly in each realm. I work full-time in infosec and I am a part-time university professor (with a Ph.D. in infosec), so I bridge that gap, bringing my practical real-world experience to my students and bringing the benefits of the academic world to my full-time employer.
There are universities with faculty who have practical experience and are willing to share that experience and understanding with anyone they feel they can trust. It's a judgement call, and people make mistakes on both ends. Sometimes, a well-intentioned and capable individual is passed by because the one with the knowlege is not sure if the individual can be trusted, and other times someone with malicious intent is trained.
The information is out there. You can find it from people who know and who are willing to teach or you can find it on your own through experimentation.
Do not give up. You will find the knowlege you seek if you persist.
I agree. Why is this controversial? Other than the fact that they're opening the doors to "all comers", it sounds very much like the "capture the flag" competition on the last day of the "Hacker Tools and Incident Response" course that I took in San Jose a year or two ago.
SANS organizes similar events at their larger conferences. The difference is that it's open.
I also agree with those who have stated that the DoD culture is not exactly in sync with the culture of those who can do this sort of thing. I was one of a very small number of "academics" (university infosec professors) who attended the DoD cyber crime conference in St. Louis this year and it was pretty clear that the DoD folks are reaching out for help and are not quite sure how to reach out to the academic community. It was an interesting conference, but much of what was presented by the DoD folks as "leading edge" was stuff I encountered years ago while working on my dissertation.
I am a Notary Public here in SC, and at least in SC what you stated is correct. All a Notary does is verify someone's identity and witness statements made by the individual, either clearly written or implied. (e.g. when selling a vehicle, you are implying that you are the individual named on the title as the owner and not someone else who happens to have the same name. A notary will check the name on the ID against the name on the title and then ask the "seller" to verify that he or she is the same person.)
There are serious penalties for faking a notary seal/signature, either forging one of a real notary or making a fake seal and pretending to be a notary. Technically, Notaries Public are considered officers of the court. (I say "technically" because that's the way the laws are written, but I doubt you'd receive the same penalties for assaulting a notary as you would for assaulting a judge, magistrate, clerk, or a bailiff, for example.)
(an interesting side note: the controversial "education lottery" law in SC has some strange provisions, including the fact that certain persons in "positions of trust" such as officers of the court cannot legally play the lottery. Therefore, notaries, judges, cops, and elected officials are not allowed to play the lottery.)
The captcha is "extort". I'm sure there is some significance in there somewhere that I am not seeing yet.
You can't write a nice cross-platform library...
Ballmer: Curses! The Slashdot readers have discovered our true purpose! *throws chair*
Winston Smith, a loyal worker in the Ministry of Truth, clearly denies these allegations. "There is no need for such a capability, because history never changes."
By the way, Comrade Dimedici, some employees from MiniLove will be arriving shortly to escort you to Room 101.
I don't even know where to start...
I agree with your overall assessment of South Carolina, having lived here for the past 15 years. There are clearly cultural issues that need to be overcome before any education initiative will be effective here.
South Carolina is strangely bipolar when it comes to education. The majority of the public schools seem to exist to maintain the status quo, teach to the PACT(1) test (or whatever its replacement is called), and keep the teachers employed through whatever means are leagal. South Carolina spends a very high percentage of taxes on education (as shown on the tax bills for property taxes as well as explained in state income tax booklets) yet we have some of the worst schools in the country. Apparently, Inez Tennebaum, our Secretary of Education for far too long, was publicly ridiculed on TV for her failures and she honestly thought she was doing a good job. Pretty sad, IMHO.
However, South Carolina also has some interesting charter schools - the good ones (e.g. Blythe Academy of Languages in Greenville) are in the wealthier neighbourhoods (no surprises there). There has been a large number of "online" charter schools lately. Unfortunately, the one we experienced with our son was run as effectively as a regular South Carolina public school. (In other words, it was pathetic.) I teach in an on-line program as well as on-campus at a large university, and I thought that the on-line charter school would be a good idea. I still think it could be, if done correctly.
There are many private schools in SC, catering to the wealthy. Some of them have tutions that are more than the state universities. (Surprisingly, some of the state universities in SC are very good, such as Clemson University and the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.)
Homeschooling is tolerated, barely. The majority of homeschoolers I have encountered do it for religious, rather than academic, reasons. We homeschool for academic reasons becasuse the SC schools are so bad. It is against SC law to segregate students (at least in the lower grades) by ability because someone decided it was discriminatory due to the fact that there were disproportionally fewer minority students in the advanced classes. Therefore, rather than look for a reason _why_ there were fewer minority students in the advanced classes they just decided that the practice of allowing gifted students to work at a more challenging pace without being held back by average students was racial discrimination.
I doubt those laptops will go anywhere but to public school kids.
(1) PAlmetto Achievement Test - the state created exam given to children every few years with the reported purpose of determining how well the schools are doing. Unfortunately, the teachers teach to the test instead of educating the children.
I find it interesting that the CAPTCHA for this post is "converse", which, beside its usual meaning, happens to be the name of a very good private all-women's college (Converse College) in Spartanburg, SC.
The patterns are better because you KNOW what is happening. I do computer forensics work as part of my day job.
While the chances are very, very slim, it is possible that a "random" wipe could write the exact same 1111 1111 or 0000 0000 every time to the same area. Also, how random is your random source?
Recovering anything from a drive wiped with
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda
requires highly specialized hardware and training - not what your average criminal will have handy (especially the hardware).
Governments, OTOH, may indeed have that hardware, though the "official" story is that modern hard drives have such high data density on the platters that doing a /dev/zero wipe as shown above would render the disk completely unreadable. Keep in mind that those DOD standards were created back when drives had MUCH lower data densities.
Personally, I like the sandblasting suggestion that someone else posted. That should do it - that or a vat of acid.
However, if you want to be able to use the drive again, /dev/zero should do the trick.
I am surprised that no one has brought up the "evil" bit from RFC 3514. Is this really Slashdot?
We'll see just how secure it is. My PhD is in InfoSec and I think I'm going to put some of my best doctoral and masters students on this one. :-)
You think by now Microsoft would know that saying things like that will be taken as a challenge.
Well, the gauntlet has been thrown, and the challenge has been accepted.
and who will be the first to try to register the proverbial "clownpenis.fart" ? (I think that machine name was from a Dave Barry joke.)
Does North Korea even HAVE Amateur Radio operators?
This is right next to the 70cm band, and I know that my 70cm hand-held can receive on this frequency. Anyone with a fairly standard amateur "satellite" rig should be able to pick this up easily enough, though.
I _really_ wish I had the proper hardware to listen in on this one - I don't have a good enough directional antenna to pick up the transmissions.
It should be fairly easy for someone with the proper hardware to determine if there is something up there that matches the description of what the DPRK government stated, since there are a large number of amateur radio operators who do this sort of thing frequently.
Agreed.
The iPod Touch is great for all sorts of things, but trying to use the handwriting recognition is a real pain. I normally write with a pen or pencil, so a stylus is a "natural" substitute - it feels very much like a pen or pencil, but works on the touch screen. I can do that with my Windows Mobile device, but not with my iPod Touch.
I know about the stylus at ThinkGeek. I don't have one yet, and the price is a bit too high in my opinion for a stylus.
The Japanese word transliterated "kawaii" is usually translated "cute" in dictionaries, and is composed of two kanji (borrowed Chinese characters), the first meaning "to be able to, to be allowed to" and the second meaning "to love" or "love". The Chinese word written the same way (ke3 ai4) is also translated as "cute" and the implied meaning from the order of the characters/words is "loveable".
Yes, that would most likely be the word used by Japanese tweenies and teenaged (and even older) ladies. Just remember, this is the nation and culture that brought us "Hello Kitty".
I don't know about malware in QQ's software, but QQ is much more than just China's answer to Microsoft Messenger.
QQ is a portal site that links to search engines and also provides users a place to create their "home" on the Internet, much like live.com and other sites.
Yes, QQ is insanely popular in China, as is MSN and Yahoo! chat.
I just did.
I have the pleasure (due to my Ph.D. in InfoSec) of being on my senator's "short list" of experts whom his office will consult on such matters. I will keep you posted. I should be receiving a phone call with a day.
The Mini-USB has been the standard in China for a while now according to my friends who live there. It's really nice, because it makes finding chargers and ear-phone adapters easy, unlike here in the USA.
Smeg! (Red Dwarf)
Frack! Felgercarb! (Battlestar Galactica)
Can we start a list of SciFi "made up" profanities that we can keep on tap in case SC (where I live, unfortunately) actually manages to pass this smeg?
Please provide references as shown above for the new vocabulary. Bonus points if anyone can provide the translations used in other languages.
That is exactly Brasil's policy: they require of a country's citizens whatever that country requires of Brasil's citizens.
If the USA requires Brasilians to register 72 hours in advance of visiting the USA, it won't take long before Brasil requires US citizens to register 72 hours in advance of visiting Brasil.
I think it's fair.
The only problem is that these politicians somehow either don't understand or are exempt from these procedures.
How about a local "harvest" of Soylent Green? Then the hippie problem will be solved.
> Have any of your own that I might borrow?
(Best said in a slow, monotone voice) "Because my Rice Krispies(tm) told me to wear shorts today."
If they thought you were crazy before you answer, that should remove just about any doubt.
Just for reference, that character is pronounced "shou3" in Mandarin Chinese and "te" in Japanese, and it means "hand".
Your reference to the "Chinese curse" (there's some debate on the real origins of it) "May you live in interesting times." is actually more "interesting" than you may think.
The phrase in Chinese that is most commonly translated as "interesting" is made of two words (three characters): you3 yi4 si. I won't try to imbed Chinese characters here.
you3 means "to have", as in "I have a car".
yi4 si means "significance" or "meaning", for example, it is used to ask what a word means.
So, a slightly more literal translation would be "May you live in significant times."
To me, that's more frightening than "interesting times".
Your question is valid, and I hope that I will be able to answer it adequately.
You are correct. We have a secret ballot system here in the USA and except under very specific circumstances (disability and absentee ballots), no-one should be able to know how any other individual voted unless the voter volunteers the information.
Given that, however, there are way to obtain fairly reliable (within a small margin of error, statistically speaking) estimates of such matters.
The first is that many, if not all, states require race information on voter registration. This is intended to aid in proper identification at polling places. Date of birth and address are included at least on my state's registration card, so these data can be cross-checked with a photo ID such as a driver's license.
Given that voter race information is available to the voter registration board for individuals, aggregate information (x% white, y% African American, z% Hispanic, etc) is made available to the media for analysis based on each precinct.
There are many precincts that are mostly African American.
By examining precinct-by-precinct results it is possible to obtain a broad estimate when there are precincts that are largly one race or another.
That, in and of itself, does not give the 97% figure.
The 97% figure is based on exit polls and is supported by the by-precinct results when compared with the racial demographics of the precincts.
Yes, people can lie on exit polls. Yes, people can refuse to answer. However, this is the best we can do.
So, you are correct, I do not KNOW. However, there is a preponderance of evidence, also supported by the fact that the media are pushing these numbers, that support the 97% figure, give or take a few percentage points.