Comment WTF? (Score 5, Funny) 267
I can only imagine how many emails you will get today with "WTF?" as the subject line. I'm gonna take a wild guess and say it will be more than your usual 50. :)
Submission + - Feds Eye Las Vegas for Surveillance Tactics (washingtonpost.com)
samuraiknight writes: "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right? According to the Washington Post, it does, but "for a lot longer than most people realize."
Although the surveillance tactics of the Vegas casinos are now common knowledge thanks to popular movies such as Ocean's Eleven, the article provides additional details into the methods that most attract the attention of their security counterparts in the US federal government.
The article also covers further efforts in link analysis as well as RFID in chips, data mining for marketing purposes, and even provides a brief anecdote covering how a former member of the MIT Blackjack Team slips by all the surveillance."On occasion, national security and casino security interests directly intersect. Jeff Jonas discovered that after he developed a computer program for the casino industry that helps detect cheats using aliases.
A 43-year-old technology visionary and high-school dropout, Jonas soon realized that his system could also identify employees colluding with gamblers, say, by discovering that they share a home address. He calls his program NORA — for Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness.
Every time a player registers for a loyalty card or a hotel room, Jonas explained from his lab near the Strip, the player's name, address and other data are sent to NORA. Also in the casinos' NORA database is information about employees and vendors.
NORA can spot links that a casino employee probably would never discover, such as a phone number shared by two different names, Jonas said. It once identified a casino promotions director who picked a winning ticket that belonged to her sister, he said.
The idea was so powerful that the CIA's private investment arm, In-Q-Tel, poured more than $1 million into NORA to help root out corruption in federal agencies. Then, after the Sept. 11 attacks, it became clear that link analysis could be useful in tracking terrorist networks.
Home-made Helicopters in Nigeria 319
W33dz writes "A 24-year-old undergraduate from Nigeria is building helicopters out of old car and bike parts. Mubarak Muhammed Abdullahi, a physics student, spent eight months building the yellow model seen on yahoo or on Gizmodo using the money he makes from repairing cell phones and computers. While some of the parts have been sourced from a crashed 747, the chopper contains all sorts of surprises."
Submission + - Apple set to report on summer of iPhone
W33dz writes: "How much money is the Jesus phone really worth? With Apple's quarterly earnings due later today, the expectations are high for the maker of Macs and that fancy new gadget that can walk on water. The story is here, but you can get the earnings directly from Apple's investor relations site after 2200 GMT today."
Submission + - Home-made helicopters hit northern Nigeria (yahoo.com)
W33dz writes: "A 24-year-old undergraduate from Nigeria is building helicopters out of old car and bike parts. Mubarak Muhammed Abdullahi, a physics student, spent eight months building the yellow model seen here (Yahoo), or here (Gizmodo) using the money he makes from repairing cell phones and computers. While some of the parts have been sourced from a crashed 747, the chopper contains all sorts of surprises."
