"DHS is essentially whittling Real ID down to nothing—all in the name of denying Real ID is a failure," said ACLU senior legislative counsel Tim Sparapani. "Real ID is in its death throes, and any signs of life are just last gasps."
Even if a hacker put some code into a music file (for example), the music file player should just try to send the code to the speakers along with the rest of the data, not actually perform any commands (like taking over your computer). For this to be possible, the makers of the player software practically have to write custom code to look for and execute hacker code.
In other words, for a virus to be embedded in a video, music, or text file, there has to be deliberately placed code in the player that watches for commands and acts on them.
It's stupid to think you could ever get a virus from a text document, a music file or video file, but, thanks to sloppy programming practices like this, it happens. Remember not to get distracted by the spin doctors and "damage control" people. If there's a virus in video, music, or text, it's the fault of the player/reader, not becasue of clever hacking.
Related topic(s):
JTAG ERROR: malware-viruses-worms-and-trojans-oh-my doesn't appear to be a post_name, link_note, or url
1) In theory, they're promising only to take the "data points" not the fingerprint, but if they use the same data points as other companies, then the data points are the same as your fingerprint. If every company uses different data points, as data from each breach is combined, it create a better and better picture of your actual fingerprint.
2) Unlike a credit card that can be re-issued or changed, fingerprints can't.
3) You don't leave impressions of your credit card everywhere you touch like you do with your finger. Fingerprints can be used for tracking and accountability that you shouldn't have to be responsible for unless you're a criminal.
4) There was nothing wrong with the system that was there before. Swiping a credit card is actually easier and faster than putting your finger on a reader and entering a PIN.
5) The more people that use the system, the more problems they will have with false matches (where your finger and someone elses are too close to distinguish. Granted that the PIN solves this problem to a degree, but these companies will have to add more and more data points to the algorithm to make the system work. The more data points they use, the closer to storing your actual fingerprint.
This is bad, bad news. I wonder when the first "fingerprint data breach" will happen.
For a company who's motto is "Don't be Evil", they sure aren't putting up much of a fight in their slide towards wretchedness.
I love Google’s technology, don’t get me wrong. But I think Google has turned a page here. They have now enabled a piece of software that is hard to remove and forces users to look at a really bad page. In fact, Google knows that this provides users with a dramatically worse experience.
Of course, Microsoft has done this for years. If you type a wrong address into IE, it automatically comes up with an MSN search page (which I always hated). But I don't agree that it's hard to uninstall, just that people who don't know better won't realize that they CAN uninstall it.
I DO agree that this is a bad move on Google's part. If they are truly trying to create a better customer experience and make some money on the way, they made a bad move here. What they've done instead (and Dell too), is make some money by making a worse experience for the customer.
Staff members of an elementary school staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables.
…
"The children were in that room in the dark, begging for their lives, because they thought there was someone with a gun after them," said Brandy Cole, whose son went on the trip.
……………………hmm…………….. well,……………… What do you say to this?
These teachers are damned lucky they didn't do it in my kid's school.
Most of the students stood up and said, "That was a good one." "Yeah, you got me." High fives were exchanged.
Either the school is totally downplaying this or CNN has got some serious problems with their accuracy. Either way, if even one child was crying and taking this too seriously, the "prank" should have ended. I still think it shouldn't have happened in the first place and I'll just go back to what I said before: it's a lucky thing for them it didn't happen at my kid's school. I would have been in the princicpal's office the same day.
But something about this press release bothers me and apparently I'm not the only one:
"The children went to sleep and did not discuss it the following morning."
The absurdity of that statement is staggering. They are trying to convince people that in a class of over 60 students, after teachers pulled a 'prank', that not one of these ~60 students said anything about it the next day? Not one of them teased another one about falling for the 'joke'? Really? Not one?
The person who posted this comment on the Slashdot forums is right on.
"It's unacceptable to say it can't be figured out," former U.S. ambassador Gordon Giffin said Thursday from Calgary.
"The U.S. can't just throw up its hands. It's almost childish, like they're taking their marbles and going home," said Giffin, who served in Canada from 1997 to 2001.
"It's just not productive. For Pete's sake, we're working with Canada. We're not working with some Third World country."
Let's sum up. If the Spy Act become law, hardware, software, and network vendors will be granted carte blanche to use spyware themselves to police their customers' use of their products and services. Incredibly broad exceptions will probably allow even the worst of the adware outfits to operate with legal cover. State attempts to deal with the spyware problem will be pre-empted and enforcement left up almost entirely to the FTC. Gee, what's not to like in that deal?
She flailed away at the teachers who tried to control her. She pulled one woman’s hair. She was kicking.
Unless the kid has a knife or some other kind of weapon, nothing they can do could be counted as dangerous.
Desre’e was charged with battery on a school official, which is a felony, and two misdemeanors: disruption of a school function and resisting a law enforcement officer. After a brief stay at the county jail, she was released to the custody of her mother.
So your kid has a felony and two misdemeanors on record from the time they're 6? What was wrong with the normal way, calling her mother? So now this poor girl, her mother, the community, and most of the Internet all have less respect and trust for police officers. Great work Florida.
Private businesses such as rental and mortgage companies and car dealers are checking the names of customers against a list of suspected terrorists and drug traffickers made publicly available by the Treasury Department, sometimes denying services to ordinary people whose names are similar to those on the list.
…
Yet anyone who does business with a person or group on the list risks penalties of up to $10 million and 10 to 30 years in prison, a powerful incentive for businesses to comply.
…
"It prohibits anyone from doing business with anyone who's on the list. It does not have a minimum dollar amount. . . . The local deli, if it sells a sandwich to someone whose name appears on the list, has violated the law."
This might be a good thing if it actually worked. Judging on how the no-fly list works, I'm guessing it doesn't.
So what happens when the terrorists start using names like:
John Smith
Mike Brown
Chris Anderson
Mary Jones
Beth Miller
If one or two terrorists use something like that as an alias, our whole country will shut down.
(H/T to privacy.org for the link to the original article)
Citing the 9/11 Commission's support for more secure documentation for U.S. entry, Chertoff pointed out that U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents currently must look at more than 8,000 different forms of identification, whether birth certificates, driver's licenses or other documents.
So their answer to the problem?
The alternative license will contain a Radio Frequency Identification chip, commonly known as RFID, which the guard booths will use to scan the license as a traveler or trucker pulls up to the booth. U.S. passports issued since late 2006 already contain RFID chips.
They're going to offer a license that has no shielded covers like passports do that border guards will now just non-chalantly swipe across a reader rather than take the time to inspect. Brilliant. Maybe next, they can just put the readers out for the people in the vehicle to use making it even more convenient. That way, the criminals wouldn't have to bother changing the photo on the ID since no one would be looking anyway.
This is very interesting. Apparently it gets hundreds of miles per tank and runs on air. Because it doesn't use combustion, the oil needs only be replaced once every 15,000 miles and the exhaust can be used for air conditioning.
Most importantly,
Microcontrollers are used in every device in the car, so one tiny radio transmitter sends instructions to the lights, indicators etc
There are no keys – just an access card which can be read by the car from your pocket.
Why would they ruin a revolutionary car like this with such a stupid use of wireless devices? How will they keep them from getting stolen? How will they keep people from sending them rogue signals that mess up their operation?
Chances are, they just thought "Hey, this would be really cool!" without ever considering the security and safety.
A company who's trying to seel their solution to the TSA is out to prove that the no-fly list is bogus. By going to their site, you can enter a name and see if you have a good chance of being on the no-fly list yourself. Hopefully, enough people will try this and see what a stupid idea it was for the TSA to have done this based on names alone.
