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Comment Walkers (Score 1) 97

by mephist01 (#45625553) Attached to: Need Directions? Might Not Want To Ask a Transit Rider

I've lived in a few different cities and I've always lived downtown close to work and gotten around mostly by walking and never had a car. I find that while I can give good directions to pedestrians I can't give good directions to motorists who stop and ask. This happened all the time in the last place I lived which was a big city that had a densely packed core with lots of one way streets that curved and didn't make much sense.

When I want to get somewhere I just walk in that direction turning here and there as the lights let me. I don't notice that you can't turn left onto such and such street or even that such and such is one way or there are barriers to traffic at some point and you can't drive through.

If you're driving it's probably best to ask another motorist for directions, though that's not always possible.

Comment Re:More a fingerprint then a name (Score 2) 96

by mephist01 (#44378815) Attached to: Unique Howls Are What Wolves Use As Names

Exactly. Regarding the dolphins, Geoffrey Pullum (Prof. Linguistics, U of Edinburgh) covered this here:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=5453
" 'The researchers found that individuals only responded to their own calls, by sounding their whistle back.'

Now, think about that. If you call out "Geoff Pullum!" in a crowded street, and I'm there within earshot, I'm likely to turn round and look at you. But what I am not likely to do is yell "Geoff Pullum!" back at you."

Comment Re:But a BYTE Is a letter (Score 1) 259

by mephist01 (#44081123) Attached to: Introducing the NSA-Proof Crypto-Font

I've seen a couple academic articles in pdfs where copied text came out as jibberish. At the time I thought it was copy protected because when I examined the metadata I saw that dozens of proprietary fonts had been embedded.

If a font that escapes OCR is created so that it does not match ascii or unicode standards then I can see that it wouldn't be machine readable, at least until someone works out the mapping manually. However, the document wouldn't be searchable and would be pretty much an image.
Encryption

Why Sony Cannot Stop PS3 Pirates 378

Posted by Soulskill from the of-pots-and-kettles dept.
Sam writes "A former Ubisoft exec believes that Sony will not be able to combat piracy on the PlayStation 3, which was recently hacked. Martin Walfisz, former CEO of Ubisoft subsidiary Ubisoft Massive, was a key player in developing Ubisoft's new DRM technologies. Since playing pirated games doesn't require a modchip, his argument is that Sony won't be able to easily detect hacked consoles. Sony's only possible solution is to revise the PS3 hardware itself, which would be a very costly process. Changing the hardware could possibly work for new console sales, though there would be the problem of backwards compatibility with the already-released games. Furthermore, current users would still be able to run pirated copies on current hardware." An anonymous reader adds commentary from PS3 hacker Mathieu Hervais about Sony's legal posturing.
Internet Explorer

IE8 May Be End of the Line For Internet Explorer 380

Posted by kdawson from the don't-let-the-door-hit-you dept.
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy reports on rumors that IE8 may be Internet Explorer's swan song: 'IE8 is the last version of the Internet Explorer Web browser,' Kennedy writes. 'It seems that Microsoft is preparing to throw in the towel on its Internet Explorer engine once and for all.' And what will replace it? Some are still claiming that Microsoft will go with WebKit, which is used by Safari and Chrome. The WebKit story, Kennedy contends, could be a feint and that Microsoft will instead adopt Gazelle, Microsoft Research's brand-new engine that thinks like an OS. 'This new engine will supposedly be more secure than Firefox or even Chrome, making copious use of sandboxing to keep its myriad plug-ins isolated and the overall browser process model protected.'" The sticking point will be what Microsoft does about compatibility for ActiveX apps.
Privacy

Google Privacy Counsel Facing Criminal Charges 242

Posted by kdawson from the stay-on-the-plane dept.
ProfJonathan writes "According to a story in the IAPP's Privacy Advisor, Google's Paris-based global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, is facing criminal charges in Italy for defamation based upon a user's posting of a video to Google Video. Mr. Fleischer was on his way to the University of Milan for a speaking engagement when he was met by Italian law enforcement officials. As with the 1997 case of Compuserve's Felix Somm and the 2006 arrest in Texas of BetOnSportsUK's CEO during a layover on a trip to Costa Rica, this case once again highlights the risks faced by executives and employees of online companies whose activities may be legal and protected in their own countries, but illegal elsewhere in the world. Troubling, and worth watching."
The Courts

Associated Press Wants RIAA Case Webcast 103

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the afraid-of-scrutiny dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The Associated Press, The New York Times, and other major news organizations have gone to court to fight the RIAA over its attempt to thwart a court order which ruled that a hearing in SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum could be streamed over the internet. The news organizations agreed with Judge Gertner, the district judge who'd granted the order, arguing : 'It is hard to imagine a hearing more deserving of public scrutiny through the same technological medium that is at the heart of this litigation'. As soon as I get a copy of the actual brief I will upload it and link to it. Another amicus brief opposing the RIAA's attempt to reverse Judge Gertner was filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other First Amendment proponents and is already available online [PDF]."
Privacy

NSA Is Building a New Datacenter In San Antonio 119

Posted by kdawson from the panopticon-economy dept.
An anonymous reader writes in with an article from a Texas paper on the NSA's new facility in San Antonio. "America's top spy agency has taken over the former Sony microchip plant and is transforming it into a new data-mining headquarters... where billions of electronic communications will be sifted in the agency's mission to identify terrorist threats. ... [Author James] Bamford writes about how NSA and Microsoft had both been eyeing San Antonio for years because it has the cheapest electricity in Texas, and the state has its own power grid, making it less vulnerable to power outages on the national grid. He notes that it seemed the NSA wanted assurance Microsoft would be here, too, before making a final commitment, due to the advantages of 'having their miners virtually next door to the mother lode of data centers.' The new NSA facility is just a few miles from Microsoft's data center of the same size. Bamford says that under current law, NSA could gain access to Microsoft's stored data without even a warrant, but merely a fiber-optic cable." The article mentions the NRC report concluding that data mining is ineffective as a tactic against terrorism, which we discussed a couple of months back.

Comment Re:How about human rights for humans? (Score 3, Insightful) 1019

by mephist01 (#18601491) Attached to: Should Chimps Have Human Rights?
Seriously, it's not either or. I might as well say that I'm not going to work for women's rights or minority rights until all the problems of the straight white man are solved. There is nothing about animal suffering that is great for humanity. I think that granting rights to certain primates is problematic, but not in the same way you do. I think it's a problem to give animals rights based on their likeness to us on non-relevant criteria. The only thing that matters is their sentience. See http://garyfrancione.blogspot.com/2006/12/great-ap e-project-not-so-great.html for an animal rights critique of these projects.

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