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Slashback: Passports, Microscopes, IQ Points 220

Posted by timothy from the get-enough-iq-points-they-take-your-license dept.
Slashback tonight with updates and clarifications on recent Slashdot stories (and story arcs), including a downright Operatic end to Jon S. von Tetzchner's cross-oceanic attempt (or was that just in fun?), the status of post-death email privacy, minimizing the dangers of RFID passports, and more - read on for the details.

Actually, it's taking tests that reduces IQ. The guys at Mind Hacks have dissected the widely reported story that 'email destroys the mind faster than marijuana' [Posted on Slashdot a few days ago -- T.] and found that it is more spin than science. The results show simply that people do worse at IQ tests when distracted, although Hewlett-Packard are not releasing details of the experiment, so others cannot even evaluate if the research is sound. The use of psychobabble for marketing marches on.

One day this will all be commemorated as ... an opera. GreyPoopon writes "It looks like Jon's attempt at swimming the Atlantic has ended in early failure. Taking the blame once again is is PR Manager, Eskil Sivertsen. The raft he was using was somehow punctured this morning, and Jon had to abondon his trek to perform a heroic rescue. Perhaps someone should take on the task of sending our downtrodden adventurer a cup of Mom's hot chocolate."

PCP theorem simplified, still way over my head. Stridar writes "Sanjeev Arora's proof of the PCP theorem was a great acheivement. This theorem, a reduction of NP to PCP, allowed for many striking results on the difficulty of finding approximate solutions to NP-Hard problems. However, his original proof is long and technical, focusing on the arithmetization of booelan formulas. It has long been an open problem to simplify this result. Now Irit Dinur , a mathematician at the Hebrew University, has given a purely combinatorial proof of the PCP theorem, in her exciting paper "The PCP Theorem by Gap Amplification" ."

I think several other things end at death, too. microbee writes "The Register reports that Yahoo has complied with a court order to give a dead soldier's email account to his parents. It's not clear to me from the news whether they got direct access to the actual mail box, or just hard copy of those emails. If the former, it's a bit funny to read "the family complain they have only got emails received by Justin, not those he wrote." People have to wonder whether their privacy ends at death."

Haven't they ever seen The Killing Fields? valdean writes "Following up on past Slashdot stories, Wired News reports that the State Department is now considering adding a password to the new RFID passports, in response to 'criticism from computer security professionals and civil libertarians.' According to the article, 'The data... would be locked and unavailable to any reader that doesn't know a secret key or password to unlock the data. To obtain the key, a passport officer would need to physically scan the machine-readable text that's printed on the passport page beneath the photo... The reader would then hash the data to create a unique key that could be used to authenticate the reader and unlock the data on the RFID chip.'"

Anything with LEDs in it makes me happy. HunterD writes "Apparently a company called DigitalBlue purchased the rights to the Intel Play series, which included the Intel QX3 microscope. Well, DigitalBlue has released an upgrade called the QX5 that features an Ultrabright LED, a better camera, and a number of other upgrades."

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Slashback: Passports, Microscopes, IQ Points More

Slashback: Passports, Microscopes, IQ Points

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  • PCP Theorem (Score:5, Funny)

    by BandwidthHog ( 257320 ) <inactive.slashdo ... icallyenough.com> on Thursday April 28, 2005 @07:00PM (#12378375) Homepage Journal
    If, after checking your email while doing bonghits you can still count to one, proving theorems on PCP oughta do the trick.

  • MJ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ugodown ( 665450 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @07:04PM (#12378421) Homepage
    I don't think that anyone says that marijuana destroys the brain besides the US governmnet, and these guys.

  • Yes a novel solution... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by t_allardyce ( 48447 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @07:09PM (#12378461) Journal
    Or how about just NOT using RFID in passports and instead using tried and tested chips or strips? And no, not having to replace worn out passports is does not take priority over privacy and security, most people don't use their passports more than a dozen times a year anyway, I use my debit card every day and the chip is fine, theres no excuse to use RFID.
    • Hell, I use my credit card just about every day and IT'S fine, and its the kind with the strip.

      Seriously, how often do they think these people are gonna be swiping these things? A full tour of Europe in a day (not actually stopping to SEE anything) would be what, 30-40 swipes?
    • You have a chip in your debit card? Mine just has a mag strip.

      • Pretty much every credit, debit or charge card in the UK now has a chip as well as the mag strip (for those places that haven't moved to chip and pin authentication). Even some of the store loyalty cards use a chip instead of a mag strip.

        Stephen

    • Speak for yourself, buddy. I had to get more pages added to mine, because over a year I filled out the initial 20 pages. Waiting in huge lines to go in and out of immigration is not fun. If they can reduce the passport-stamping time from 1 minute per person to 15-30 seconds, that's a huge win, as it halves the amount of time you spend in line.

      Magstripes are easy to reproduce. Part of the reason they're going to RFID is to put Abdul's E-Z Forged Passport Drive-Thru out of business.

      • So did you live in Thailand too? One page used up per month on "visa runs."

        Just got new passport to beat the RFID implementation... it seems so goofy to have a thin little 24-page passport again!

        I don't believe RFIDs will improve pass-through time at immigration. Usually they spend the time to see how you react to questions more than anything else. Scanning only takes 3 seconds max with machine-readable passports.
        • Thailand? Hell no. Too many loser whoremonger foreigners there.

          I was going back and forth between the factory in China and my place in Japan. Half a page for the Japanese re-entry permit (my visa status didn't qualify for multiple-reentry, I got real used to the fastest way to reach the garbage incinerator in Shinagawa), and a full page for the four entry/exit stamps. Plus a full page whenever my Chinese visa needed renewing.

          I really should get a new passport before the RFID thing comes along, but my c

      • Re:Yes a novel solution... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        If they can reduce the passport-stamping time from 1 minute per person to 15-30 seconds, that's a huge win, as it halves the amount of time you spend in line.

        That will not happen. If they can reduce the passport-stamping time, they will also reduce the number of lines you can get your passport stamped in. It will still take just as long to get through the line.

    • Maybe they have other reasons besides "not wanting to wear out passports"?

      If you can't believe that, I have some dollar bills with Bill Clinton on them I'd like to sell you.

    • Re:Yes a novel solution... (Score:4, Informative)

      by swillden ( 191260 ) * <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Thursday April 28, 2005 @11:02PM (#12379953) Journal

      Or how about just NOT using RFID in passports and instead using tried and tested chips or strips?

      Several reasons:

      • Increased security. The main reason for going to a chip of some sort is to both make the passports harder to forge and to add biometrics in order to better authenticate the holder. Biometric templates are often large, and they also need to be cryptographically signed by the issuer. That means that tens of kilobytes of data storage are required. Note that some magnetic and optical stripes could partially fulfill this requirement, but aren't as secure as a chip.
      • Reliability/Durability. A contact-type chip is problematic for a passport because of the booklet form factor. Where do you put the contact plate? At the very least you'd have to make part of the booklet out of rigid plastic so that the contact plate would slot into the right place. Non-standard readers would have to be designed and built, also. Existing smart card readers expect a card form factor, obviously.
      • Convenience. Contactless is quicker and easier to use. Not much, but enough to matter when you're trying to move large numbers of people through quickly. The immigration agent does not have to spend time putting the correct corner of the passport into the correct location in the correct way.
      • Speed. Strange as it may seem, it's a fact that off-the-shelf RF technology achieves *much* higher data rates than contact smart card technology. Contact chips communicate at between 9.9bps and 115kbps, contactless chips talk at either 400kbps or 800kbps. In practice, contact chips rarely run at over 9.9kbps, which means that data moves at less then 1KBps. It's expected that many of these passports will store 20-40KB of data, so the high data rate will be important.

      The first plan by the state dept. was terrible; they took absolutely no precautions to protect the passport holder's privacy. I wrote to them to complain. The latest announcement, however, shows that they have listened and fixed all of the problems.

      They've made three changes to the plans:

      1. The chip will not divulge any data without an appropriate cryptographic authentication. The key used to perform the authentication is derived from data printed inside the passport.
      2. All communications with the chip will be encrypted using a session key so that no one can eavesdrop when the passport is being read.
      3. The passport cover will incorporate RF shielding, so that when the passport is closed the chip cannot be activated. This is to prevent an attacker from being able to identify who is carrying a passport by scanning them, as well as a few more difficult attacks.

      With these changes, there are no additional security risk as long as passport holders are careful to keep their passports closed when not being checked.

      The other concern that will no doubt be raised by some slashdotters is whether or not someone who gets hold of your passport can get your biometric data. They can, but it doesn't do any good. The data stored is in the form of a pre-processed template, not an image. It's not possible to reconstruct the original fingerprint/iris/whatever image because the template construction process discards data. It is possible to construct a *different* image which will match when compared to the template, but the constructed image will not really look like the person's biometric.

      That said, I think there are legitimate privacy arguments against the use of biometrics. The contactless smart card chip, however, poses no security risks to the passport holder, and offers improves security and convenience -- not for the holder, but for the government who issued the passport.

      • Doesn't
        'The chip will not divulge any data without an appropriate cryptographic authentication. The key used to perform the authentication is derived from data printed inside the passport.'
        completely bugger up
        'Contactless is quicker and easier to use. Not much, but enough to matter when you're trying to move large numbers of people through quickly. The immigration agent does not have to spend time putting the correct corner of the passport into the correct location in the correct way.'?

        You're going t
        • Not really. I expect the agent will have to flip the passport open and drop it face down on a flat optical scanner. The scanner can read the text regardless of the orientation. Putting it on the optical scanner also brings it within range of the contactless chip reader, which will transfer the full contents of the chip in a few seconds. Very quick and convenient. Not as convenient as not having to open the passport, but that was never going to happen anyway. The agent will open it to look at your pict
      • 2. All communications with the chip will be encrypted using a session key so that no one can eavesdrop when the passport is being read.

        I think you meant to say it is encrypted with a session key so that eavesdropping will be more difficult, at least with current technology.
    • how about we just get rid of passports and embrace *freedom*. Everybody likes freedom. We always say come here because we have freedom. The president says its about "freedom and liberty" and "liberty and freedom" (as if these were two different things).
      Why not let citizens of the planet be free to travel their own planet in their own means.
      What happened to freedom of movement?
      What happened to criticism of how the Nazis required travel papers to go anywhere?
      What happened to criticism of how the Soviets requi
  • This page [edhsw.com] linked from the blog entry has Mac OS X downloads ($12 shareware) for both the original Intel scope and the new QX5. I have neither, so can't test it, but it's suddenly an appealing way to blow a hundred bucks!

    They list the capabilities thusly:

    miXscope QX5 is a Mac OS X application written specifically for the USB QX5 Computer Microscope. The software allows you to capture images, create time-lapse movies, add a text comment, add a time stamp, add an image overlay, make a measurement, apply realtime frame averaging, or add a special effect.

    Of course, I just spotted the fact that Digital Blue are also the fine folks who brought us the American Idol Digital Camcorder [playdigitalblue.com], so that does temper my enthusiasm for handing them cash just a wee bit. But still...

  • The PCP Theorem (Score:5, Informative)

    by cpeikert ( 9457 ) <.ude.tim.mula. .ta. .trekiepc.> on Thursday April 28, 2005 @07:09PM (#12378472) Homepage
    The PCP theorem is a beautiful piece of computer science and mathematics. What's it good for? Well, for starters:
    • One can use it to show that not only are some problems very hard to get exact answers to, they are very hard to even get approximate answers to! In the most extreme case, it's hard to tell whether a graph has an enormous clique (taking up almost all the vertices), or just a very small one.
    • PCPs can be used to build very low-communication zero-knowledge proofs. So you can prove a mathematical statement to someone, using much less communication than it takes to even write down that statement, and giving her no idea why the statement is true, even though she will be absolutely convinced that it really is true!
    • PCPs can also be used to write down a (long) proof of a mathematical theorem, so that to check the theorem only requires you to look in a few random places. If the theorem is false, you'll detect it, otherwise you'll be convinced that it's true. It's as if there was a huge book of mathematics, and you opened to a random page, read a few characters, and said, "yep, it's definitely all true."
    In short: amazing!
    • By the way, the original proof of the PCP theorem wasn't just due to Sanjeev Arora. It spanned a long sequence of works, and a ton of people were involved in proving it.... more than I can remember or list here.

  • Story Arcs? (Score:3, Funny)

    by ari_j ( 90255 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @07:15PM (#12378518)
    Yeah, there have been a few legitimate arcs, I guess. But when you show the same episode every Saturday for a month, it's called "reruns," not an "arc." ;-D

  • I like the idea of Emails being made public (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ciderx ( 524837 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @07:19PM (#12378568)
    ...after my death.

    If you knew you were going to die soon, I'd have a sent mail list which would be great and populated with loads of fake emails that said things like:

    "Look, Adriana. I don't care how many other Victoria's Secrets models you're going to bring, I'm NOT going to sleep with you. And, BTW, what you suggested is (a) a waste of whipped cream and (b) isn't that a rather large vegetable for something like that?"

    and, of course

    "Oh, I figured out how to cure cancer and the key to world peace. I'll email you in a few days with the details..."

    • Re:I like the idea of Emails being made public (Score:5, Insightful)

      by antifoidulus ( 807088 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @07:28PM (#12378638) Homepage Journal
      What about the people you exchanged email with? Email is not like a journal, there are at least 2 parties involved and the privacy of those people is equally as important of the privacy of the soldier. My solution would be that if the people with whom the deceased communicated with should decide whether or not they want to forward the email on to the parents.
      • Are you also suggesting that any paper letters the soldier received should be destroyed?

        This seems pretty simple to me: the emails, like everything else the soldier owned is part of his estate, which is now owned by his parents. If he didn't want them to inherit his email account, he should have said so, or at least deleted any email he didn't want them to see.

      • Email is sent in clear-text over public networks. If you expect e-mail to have ANY privacy, you're crazy. If you want e-mail to be private, you MUST encrypt it with PGP, SKEY or something similar.

        When they sent their e-mails without encrypting them, they had already decided privacy wasn't at all important.
    • If you knew you were going to die soon, I'd have a sent mail list which would be great and populated with loads of fake emails that said things like:

      Put a EULA in there as well. It works for shrinkwrapped products: "Anyone who obtained a court order to violate my privacy and reads my personal email agrees to pay $10,000 USD per email to PETA".
    • "Look, Adriana. I don't care how many other Victoria's Secrets models you're going to bring, I'm NOT going to sleep with you."

      Too bad your credibility would take a hit when over 3,000 emails titled "Slashdot] Reply to ..." came up.
    • Of you could just stick with the classics. Mail a copy of Fermat's theorum and include the just the note "Fantastic proof..."

  • isn't that kinda pointless? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by oneishy ( 669590 ) <jczebota@[ ]ishy.com ['one' in gap]> on Thursday April 28, 2005 @07:24PM (#12378608) Homepage
    So, if it has to read "machine readable data" from in the passport before it can "unlock" the data on the rfid chip, what is the point?

    Why not just read the machine readable data like they do now and skip all the security / privacy implications of RFID tags that might be secure now, and might be insecure tomorrow.
    • So, if it has to read "machine readable data" from in the passport before it can "unlock" the data on the rfid chip, what is the point?

      Why not just read the machine readable data like they do now and skip all the security / privacy implications of RFID tags that might be secure now, and might be insecure tomorrow.

      I'm sorry, you still don't know why the government wants a passport that is readable from a distance?

  • I guess I don't get what the advantage of RFID is. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Future Man 3000 ( 706329 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @07:28PM (#12378630) Homepage
    I thought the point was to be able to "read" the card without having to dig it out. But if you have to dig it out to read a key, the technology doesn't buy you anything.

    It would help if they explained what the advantages of using RFID in cards would be -- i.e., what do they expect to do with it. I think it'd be helpful to make sure you pass through various checkpoints instead of loitering or sneaking around them, but is it possible if you have to authenticate access to the card?


    • I thought the point was to be able to "read" the card without having to dig it out. But if you have to dig it out to read a key, the technology doesn't buy you anything.
      Depends on who's buying. An unencrypted RFID passport is a wide-open invitation to identity theft. If encrypted, it merely serves as a beacon ID'ing you as American (or, as they say in some countries, a "target").
  • The National Business review reported [nbr.co.nz] the sea recue on the 26th.
  • IQ tests are only relevant when someone scores well below average or Well above average. These difference in points like the rise you get when listening to Mozart or the drop you get from Reading emails, while may be statically significant in reality means very little. A person with an IQ of 95 vs. a Person with an IQ of 130 Will not see any difference ones ability to learn. And other factors such as the ability to pay more attention during classes or better memory, better self organization, will to learn
    • > Sure people with low IQs have to work very hard to learn information and people with High IQ learn information very quickly.

      Actually, people with low IQs have to work very hard to pass tests, and people with high IQs can pass tests very quickly. There is probably some correlation between the ability to learn and the ability to pass tests, but it is certainly not 100% - although how much less is a controversial topic.

      Of course, this only serves to emphasize your main point even more strongly.
    • Actually, 95 to 130 is quite a big difference in how people learn. People with IQs of 130 don't just learn faster, they deal better with abstraction and complexity. Adults with an IQ of 130 are generally able to gather and synthesize information independently, while people with an IQ of 95 generally need more hands-on, concrete instruction.

      Now, 95 to 110, not such a huge difference. Most studies that say things lower or raise IQ are only dealing with a few points, which no, those don't make a difference

    • Re:Limited value in IQ tests. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by fafalone ( 633739 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @09:47PM (#12379536)
      And just what kind of learning are you referring to? Sophiscated symbolic learning, inferential learning, and overall conceptual learning are very different from dry fact learning, and there is a *vast* difference between below average (95) and gifted (130) in their ability to do higher learning. This is generally at the very highest levels of skill; IQ is more a measure of potential mental capability. There's some overlap with harder work on something leading to more skills than high IQ and slacking, but when pushed to the limits the 130 IQ can go much farther than the 95 IQ. Also consider that a person with a 130 IQ is 2 full standard deviations above the mean, with their mental ability in the top 97th percentile of the population, if you're claiming someone in the 37th percentile has the same ability to learn... I'd be highly suspect of your coursework in psychology.
      35 points is a HUGE difference. Now, a few points all within one standard deviation is a small difference. But a few points between scores both more than 3 standard deviations is also a huge difference. I really get tired of people thinking IQ tests are jokes, there's extensive research into it, tons and tons of science going into making each professional test. IQ is a very scientifically sound concept, if you doubt this you need to study psychology some more (as in, college courses, not mainstream therapy-only junk).
      • The sad thing is, even a lot of college courses get it wrong.

        I'm getting a master's in gifted ed. I've learned a LOT about IQ in the past couple of years. Right now I'm in a crappy low-level psychoeducational assessment class that I just need to graduate, and yesterday I had to sit through an awful lecture on IQ tests. It was obvious that I'd read more of the research than this (adjunct) professor has. I would go into all the half-truths and myths she spouted, but it'll just piss me off again.

        And t


    • Is there a study somewhere indicating where typical, 35-40 year-old marketing/advertising type professionals rank? If it's low, I might be convinced to beleive in IQ scores.
    • Mean is 100. 15 points per standard deviation. There's a huge difference between 130 and 95.
    • You have it backwards. IQ tests mean less at the far ends of the scale.

      Richard Feynman has an IQ of 125.

  • Truly Operatic end? (Score:5, Funny)

    by serutan ( 259622 ) <snoopdoug@@@geekazon...com> on Thursday April 28, 2005 @07:40PM (#12378714) Homepage
    Pretty obvious that this is a joke. I'm surprised nobody has commented on it yet. Check out the guy in the dinky raft, supposedly the support vessel. Classic.

    "A local farmer spotted the drama from his kitchen window and took surprisingly sharp photos with a remarkably powerful telescopic lens."

    And all the while he was milking a goat! Remarkable indeed!
  • Wouldn't someone with a reverse engineered reader and a zoom lens photo of the "machine readable" text on the passport still be able to "snipe" the information from a passport? I guess this would be more secure that what we have now, which divulges all information if the passport is physically viewed.
    • Never mind trying to snipe the information contained within the passport. Whether or not the information is decoded or not, it'll still be constant, which means the passport (and its holder) can be tracked remotely -- which IMO is the only reason they want to use RFID rather than a smartcard-type system.
  • If you're physically scanning the passport, you no longer have any of the advantages of RFID over, say, magstripe or 2D barcodes.

    In the meantime, You can still confirm someone's identity uniquely by the transmissions of their passport -- Who they are needs to be determined separately, but you don't need to decode an RFID to use it for tracking. -- it's just a case of having a transmitter/reciever that's powerful enough to get thru the passport's tinfoile hat.

    • This is true. The RFID is being reduced to a smartchip; something that requries physical contact to transfer data. Both are more resistant to counterfitting than thier paper equivalents. That's the more immediate problem they are trying to solve anyway. Tracking your every movement to within 30ft accuracy and storing it in a large centeral DB comes later with the national ID. That's where the real power of RFID kicks in :)
    • well, my first thought would be that if you are only thinking about using the passport at ONE workstation/checkpoint, you are absolutely correct. However, if you scan the barcode with the key for decryption at the first checkpoint and use a secure network (to transmit the decryption key to other nodes on the network), then the RFID can be read anywhere on this network.

      Think about scanning your passport when you check in at the airport, then not having to show ID to get through the metal detector or at cus
      • You don't have to send anything other than a hash on the raw data and/or the decoded data itself. The data in the RFID tag (encrypted or not) is it's own identifier. If all I want to do is track where you are, I don't even need to be able to decode the data. If I need the decoded data off of the card, I get it on the first read.

        In any case, even if you give the chip adequate protection to prevent at-distance reading, then all of the advantages of the tag (vs smart-chip) go away -- but you still hav

    • it's just a case of having a transmitter/reciever that's powerful enough to get thru the passport's tinfoile hat.

      The shielded cover produces a Faraday cage [wikipedia.org]. The only way to "get through" is to generate so much power that the mesh burns up. That will destroy the chip, of course, and lots of other stuff.

      • The 'cage' will probably be incomplete. It will leak. This will make life hard on 'normal' RF readers, but special-build units may be able to read a passport at distance even despite the foil cover. In a worst case, you might even be able to take advantages of errors in it's design to make reading easier.

        • The 'cage' will probably be incomplete. It will leak. This will make life hard on 'normal' RF readers, but special-build units may be able to read a passport at distance even despite the foil cover.

          Perhaps. However, keep in mind that normal readers can only get a response from the card when it's within 2 inches. Special-built, illegal units that generate dangerously high power levels can push this out to as much as 30 inches, with very careful orientation of passport and reader antenna. Add some shie

    • If you're physically scanning the passport, you no longer have any of the advantages of RFID over, say, magstripe or 2D barcodes.

      Yes, you do, actually. Two major advantages. The first is that the chip can authenticate itself cryptographically, making forgery vastly more difficult. The second is data volumes. You could hold enough data on a magnetic stripe (though it would have to be both much larger and far more dense -- and correspondingly less reliable -- than a credit card stripe) but you'd have

  • Operatic end (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm truly shocked at the depravity of Jon's acts, this was clearly a huge scam. Truly shocked.

    I urge all downloaders to demand a refund ... err... no, I urge you all to return your copy of the downloaded browser to Opera (by e-mail, of course).
  • http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/ebiz/yahoo-sol dier-email-ellsworth-42518.html [ecommercetimes.com]

    Don't you think that if the soldier wanted the family to have a given email he would have sent it to them?

  • The Mind Hacks analysis (Score:4, Informative)

    by wka ( 23275 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @08:47PM (#12379199)
    Sine it does not seem to be posted above, here is a link to the Mind Hacks analysis of the IQ study [mindhacks.com].

  • My Resume #2 (Score:4, Funny)

    by eander315 ( 448340 ) * on Thursday April 28, 2005 @09:01PM (#12379276)
    Dear Opera,

    I recently applied for the soon-to-be opened positions of CEO and PR Manager at your company. My sole qualification of actually being alive has been nullified, apparently, due to the failure of Mr Sivertsen's raft within swimming distance of the Norwegian coast. In light of that event, I would like to revise my previous job request to include "raft support technician" or "sr. wetsuit admin", as these positions are now apparently available.

    Thank you again for your time, I hope to hear from you soon.

  • Linux QX3 drivers (Score:5, Informative)

    by jonsmirl ( 114798 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @09:57PM (#12379601) Homepage
    The CPiA webcam driver supports the QX3 on Linux.
    CPiA webcam driver for Linux [sourceforge.net]
    Just turn on CONFIG_VIDEO_CPIA=m when you build your kernel. You can even use /proc to turn the microscope lights on and off.

    CPiA is not made any more. Maybe the QX5 uses a similar webcam chip.

    Old slashdot story [slashdot.org] about the QX3

  • Physically Scan (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jeffkjo1 ( 663413 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @10:30PM (#12379782) Homepage
    To obtain the key, a passport officer would need to physically scan the machine-readable text that's printed on the passport page beneath the photo

    Ok, at this point, they're already scanning the passport, why not just put all the information on the magnetic strip, rather than waste money on an additional RFID chip?
  • Why use RFID when smartcard technology is just as secure and doesn't have the same information safety concerns? They needn't even encrypt the data on them. Why such a need for sticking RF beacons on everyone?

  • Email after death (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sloppy ( 14984 ) * on Friday April 29, 2005 @12:47AM (#12380473) Homepage Journal
    This isn't as much of a privacy invasion as you might think, since even when you were alive, you knew that the email was getting transmitted over a public network where lots of people had an opportunity to see it.

    Unless your email is encrypted. If you care about privacy, make sure everyone has your pgp key and uses it.

    It is up to users to protect email privacy, not ISPs and not mailbox hosts.

  • Quoth Opera's PR page "It was cold and wet and horrible and I was really, really scared," says Eskil Sivertsen, Opera's PR Manager who operated the raft. "The night had been crisp and starlit, and we had fallen asleep in the raft to the gentle movement of the waves. In the morning, I gave Jon two chocolate bars and some of those mini carrots he likes so much before he..." Is there something going on between Silvertsen and von Tetzchner? I'm half expecting some sort of talk about them laying on their bed
  • The raft he was using was somehow punctured this morning, and Jon had to abondon his trek

    I think it was a really teeny tiny iceberg. I hope the movie is better than Open Water.

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