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Comment It doesn't scale (Score 1) 129

We do this in Canada too, and it works where the number of people you're trying to recognize is small. The "birthday paradox"* says that if you're comparing 23 people, you have a 50% chance of a match. You have to multiply this by the error rate (usually much less than 2%) of a facial match program to get the false-positive rate, but it's still huge.

The German federal security service tried out Siemen's facial matcher years ago, found it had a low error rate... and was completely useless!

When you had hundreds of criminals to look for in thousands of airport passengers a day, it was directing insane numbers of people to the "capture the terrorist" queue (;-))

--dave
[*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem]

Comment Re:Force of Law (Score 1) 355

Engage a lawyer familiar with class actions *before* speaking to the police. You're an individual engaging in trial by battle with a huge company, and you need someone with the same degree of hitting power on your side before you start. They can advise on what's most effective in your jurisdiction. In Canada, the fraud squad is effective against enemies of moderate size. I don't see case law from them going after companies the size of a small country (;-))

Comment Re:Linux Cgroups are a good subset of this (Score 3, Informative) 161

The only thing mainframes have that Unix/Linux Resource Managers lack is "goal mode". I can't set a TPS target and have resources automatically allocated to stay at or above the target. I *can* create minimum guarantees for CPU, memory and I/O bandwidth on Linux, BSD and the Unixes. I just have to manage the performance myself, by changing the minimums.
Data Storage

Linux Needs Resource Management For Complex Workloads 161

storagedude writes: Resource management and allocation for complex workloads has been a need for some time in open systems, but no one has ever followed through on making open systems look and behave like an IBM mainframe, writes Henry Newman at Enterprise Storage Forum. Throwing more hardware at the problem is a costly solution that won't work forever, he notes.

Newman writes: "With next-generation technology like non-volatile memories and PCIe SSDs, there are going to be more resources in addition to the CPU that need to be scheduled to make sure everything fits in memory and does not overflow. I think the time has come for Linux – and likely other operating systems – to develop a more robust framework that can address the needs of future hardware and meet the requirements for scheduling resources. This framework is not going to be easy to develop, but it is needed by everything from databases and MapReduce to simple web queries."

Comment Re:Maybe, maybe not. (Score 4, Informative) 749

The criteria is "the company that has the power to demand the data, has to do so if ordered by their country's courts". This probably dates back to the 16th century or earlier. Some time around the Hanseatic League...

A Canadian company with data in Outer Mongolia has to produce the data if it can. If the Outer Mongols prohibit the Canadian company from demanding it normally, the Canadians can't be ordered to produce it, because the data isn't in the Canadian company's control. If they allow it to be demanded normally, a Canadian court can get it. They have to do it via the Mongolian branch, they can't just issue court orders in Mongolia.

Your suspicion is correct: a Canadian company that controls data in the U.S. can indeed be ordered by a Canadian court to produce it .

--dave

Comment Re:Stop throwing good money after bad. (Score 1) 364

Canada's government of the day is using it as a money-sink. Our requirements are for a twin-engine, long-range, non-stealthy aircraft with a moderate ground-support capability, such as the F-18 Hornet we now use. They rejected the newer super hornet, and so I fear the entire programme exists only to soak up money they don't want to spend on the priorities of the other parties...

Submission + - Canadian Supreme Court Delivers Huge Win For Internet Privacy (michaelgeist.ca)

An anonymous reader writes: For the past several months, many Canadians have been debating privacy reform, with the government moving forward on two bills involving Internet surveillance and expanded voluntary, warrantless disclosure of personal information. Today, the Supreme Court of Canada entered the debate and completely changed the discussion, issuing its long-awaited R. v. Spencer decision, which examined the legality of voluntary warrantless disclosure of basic subscriber information to law enforcement. Michael Geist summarizes the findings, noting that the unanimous decision included a strong endorsement of Internet privacy, emphasizing the privacy importance of subscriber information, the right to anonymity, and the need for police to obtain a warrant for subscriber information except in exigent circumstances or under a reasonable law.
United States

Did Russia Trick Snowden Into Going To Moscow? 346

An anonymous reader writes "Ex-KGB Major Boris Karpichko says that spies from Russia's SVR intelligence service, posing as diplomats in Hong Kong, convinced Snowden to fly to Moscow last June. 'It was a trick and he fell for it,' Karpichko, who reached the rank of Major as a member of the KGB's prestigious Second Directorate while specializing in counter-intelligence, told Nelson. 'Now the Russians are extracting all the intelligence he possesses.'"

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