Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Comment Re:It will never be reliable enough... (Score 1) 69

Except that it's less about keeping the wrong people out and more about making it easier for the right people to get in. The masses don't like multi-factor authentication because, frankly, it's way more of a pain than just typing in a password. This sort of technology encourages adoption of more secure methods because, assuming it works well, Mr. Bank get more security, and, because it is much more user friendly, they won't get a ton of calls from their users bitching about how much of a pain it is to log into their online banking site.

Comment Re:It will never be reliable enough... (Score 4, Insightful) 69

I posted this before, but I'll summarize here:

If this matches, it's likely that you are who you say you are. If this doesn't match, it just asks for additional factors of authentication (security questions, smartcards, etc). It is not a replacement for any other form of authentication.

Comment Re:Smells like an academic spinoff (Score 5, Interesting) 69

This is not so much an authentication method as a heuristic used to decide whether or not to ask for additional credentials. It's exactly analogous to the way security questions work for online banking. If it recognizes you, there's a good chance you are who you say you are and your password is considered sufficient. But, if it doesn't recognize you, that isn't necessarily indicative of an impostor, just that it needs to ask for more information (in the form of a token, smartcard, security question, etc) before it can be confident you are who you say you are.

A "yes' from this this is acceptance, but a "no" is not a complete rejection. It just makes you jump through an extra hoop or two.

Comment Re:100 IQ is relative to average (Score 1) 421

by mmelson (#41776905) Attached to: Are We Getting Smarter? Rising IQ Scores In the Twenty-First Century

You've got to be careful with the term "average". In the text you quoted, it says that the *median* is defined as 100 IQ points, but that doesn't mean the *mean* isn't increasing. If the bottom half of the population is not getting dumber but the top half is getting smarter, you could have a situation where the median is still 100 but the mean is going up.
Earth

Gold Nanoparticles Turn Trees Into Streetlights 348

Posted by samzenpus from the elf-approved dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Street lights are an important part of our urban infrastructure — they light our way home and make the roads safe at night. But what if we could create natural street lights that don't need electricity to power them? A group of scientists in Taiwan recently discovered that placing gold nanoparticles within the leaves of trees causes them to give off a luminous reddish glow. The idea of using trees to replace street lights is an ingenious one — not only would it save on electricity costs and cut CO2 emissions, but it could also greatly reduce light pollution in major cities."

Comment Re:GPS in a jam (Score 2, Interesting) 851

by RealErmine (#33837040) Attached to: College Student Finds GPS On Car, FBI Retrieves It

someone want to comment on the effectiveness of GPS jammers?

Most likely prohibited by the FCC.

These are definitely prohibited by the FCC / FAA. Even a GPS re-radiation system (for bringing GPS indoors) must be registered with the authorities. I have personally been witness to this situation when a company that makes re-rad devices was not checking that its customers were authorized to use the equipment. The FCC / FAA tracked them down and made them contact all their customers to register their equipment.

Slashdot Top Deals

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome. -- Dr. Johnson

Close