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The arcane legislative change dealing with a "Point of Order Against Increasing Direct Spending," is part of a broader mix of proposed rule changes from the GOP, which impact everything from possible fines against lawmakers for violations of House floor decorum, to barring former members - who are now lobbyists - from ... |
The rules package is still not final, and may still be discussed in a larger meeting of GOP lawmakers before the new Congress begins on Tuesday at 12 noon. |
Once the stuff found only in James Bond movies, biometrics identification technologies based on biological features-is rapidly moving into the mainstream to help prevent unauthorized access to ATMs, computers, buildings and other important assets.Propelled by cheaper and better software and hardware, as well as enhanci... |
"PINs and passwords can be lost, but it's hard to misplace your hands, face or eyes," says James Wayman, director emeritus of the U.S. National Biometrics Test Center and a biometrics researcher at San Jose State University in San Jose, Calif. |
The biometrics market has skyrocketed, rising from just US$6.6 million in 1990 to $63 million in 1999, according to Wayman. During the same time span, the average unit cost for biometrics devices dropped from more than $5,000 to less than $600. But as biometrics gain momentum, many CIOs still wonder which of the major ... |
Fingerprint readers are the most widely used and least expensive biometrics technology. Complete systems can cost less than $100, says Martin Reynolds, a vice president and research fellow at Dataquest Inc., a technology market research company in San Jose, Calif. "They're also reliable and very rugged," he adds. The u... |
In Connecticut, fingerprint scanning already helps the state government snare welfare cheats. The Connecticut Department of Social Services uses a Polaroid identification system that creates digital fingerprint images of welfare recipients. While the system records and matches the fingerprints (to determine whether an ... |
The program, which launched in 1996, has saved taxpayers approximately $23 million in its first three years of operation, says David Mintie, the project's program manager. |
Although fingerprint scanning is cheap and generally accurate, it's not as foolproof as some other biometric technologies. According to Reynolds, various types of fingerprint reproductions (latex moldings, for one) have fooled readers in the past. That loophole could pose a big problem for banks, government agencies an... |
Then there's the performance problem. Fingerprint recognition technology can bog down when connected to a massive database. Leisurely performance usually isn't a problem for small businesses or government agencies with captive clients. But for organizations with large databases and significant customer service commitme... |
When scanned for identification, the iris serves as a kind of human bar code-a unique pattern of connective tissue and other features. In the entire human population, no two irises are alike, even between identical twins. |
Customer convenience, enhanced security and rapid verification convinced Houston's Bank United to test Iridian technology in its next generation ATMs (a recent acquisition by Seattle-based Washington Mutual may change those plans). "We wanted to use this technology to replace both the ATM card and PIN number," says Ron... |
Iris recognition's biggest disadvantage has been its high cost. But prices have fallen dramatically during the past few years. Iridian, for example, recently introduced a low-end iris recognition product, Authenticam, which will sell for $299 as a single unit. Regardless of cost, iris recognition offers an important in... |
Facial recognition is another biometrics technology that's widely considered nonintrusive. It's so passive, in fact, that the systems can scan people without their knowledge. Gartner Dataquest's Reynolds notes that many casinos, and even some police departments, use a combination of security cameras and facial recognit... |
Facial recognition works by isolating human faces in still pictures and measuring an array of facial characteristics, such as the geometry of a person's eyes, mouth and nose. Using a proprietary algorithm, the system compares the image to database-stored photos for probability-ranked matches. And certain facial aspects... |
Besides spotting potential pests, facial recognition can also provide access verification. San Francisco-based InnoVentry uses technology from Jersey City, N.J.-based Visionics in its cash management machines, which reside in supermarkets, convenience stores and other retail outlets in 20 states. To protect against fra... |
Although generally satisfied with the technology's performance, Frank Petro, InnoVentry's chairman and CEO, admits that being an early adopter has presented some challenges. "We had to figure out a way to get people to look at the camera properly," he says. Light control also proved to be a problem, since too much ligh... |
Like other biometric technologies, facial recognition system prices have fallen rapidly. Visionics estimates that a bank can add the capability for less than 10 cents per transaction. In a corporate setting, costs range from about $50 to $70 per seat. |
As biometrics products become simpler and cheaper, the technology has begun to turn up in a number of places including PC keyboards, notebook computers and mobile phones. Acer America, for example, has incorporated a fingerprint reader into its TravelMate 739TLV notebook. "The technology is designed to prevent thieves ... |
Facial recognition technology may also be headed into the mainstream. Visionics already offers a Pocket PC/CE version of its FaceIt facial recognition technology. The software works on a variety of handheld devices, including Casio Computer Co. Ltd.'s Cassiopeia, Hewlett-Packard Co.'s Jornada, and Microsoft Corp.'s Mi-... |
Voice recognition, long touted as a convenient, nonintrusive security technology, could also come of age in the next three to four years, predicts Patti Cloar, a senior industry analyst with Business Communications Co., a technology research company in Norwalk, Conn. "Right now, the software isn't refined enough. Backg... |
While many industry observers believe that people will gladly swap their passwords and PINs for biometric access, the growing availability of advanced security technology has some people worried. San Jose State's Wayman, for instance, wonders where biometrics is leading us. "On one hand, you have these great tools for ... |
It seems that the LG Nexus rumors are becoming more rampant as Belarusian website Onliner has posted photos of the rumored handset. These are probably the clearest photos of the device we’ve seen so far and assuming these photos are to be believed, we like what we see! The website has also “confirmed” some of the specs... |
Filed in Cellphones. Read more about Leaked, LG and Nexus. |
The earth isn’t looking healthy. Most of us care about how we can engage with and keep safe the thing that our lives – and our children’s lives – depend on. It’s no longer an academic question, but one that stares deep into the human condition and how our communities relate to the material, nature and the ecological. |
Recently I’ve spent time in the company of incredible people. I live in Europe, and at various conferences and meetings I've recently found myself surrounded by friends from home. |
They were mainly Aboriginal Australians, and they reminded me of where I come from, and what’s important in life. Some were professors, others were social workers, artists and writers, but what they had in common was an intense engagement with their communities and the wider Australian public discourse: they cared. |
Australia has become one of the test cases for climate change, as seen in scary books like Jared Diamond’s Collapse. The French social scientist Bruno Latour remarked in February this year on the ‘uniquely Australian strategy of voluntary sleepwalking towards catastrophe’. In the face of the Abbott Government’s ecologi... |
We now have our own political paradigm: the uniquely Australian model of wilful ignorance is agnotology, where 'ignorance is not merely the absence of knowledge, but an outcome of cultural and political struggle.' A substantial, if not the major part of this struggle is the wilful ignorance of indigenous jurisprudence ... |
I wish he wasn’t, but Latour is right. ‘Business as usual’ pervades the politics and comfort of the country more than ever before. The International Panel on Climate Change warns that profit without limitations cannot continue. This conflicts with the language of our prime minister who said last week that coal is good ... |
But what he forgets is that humanity lives within the earth’s critical zone, a home that’s not looking so good for humanity. Abbott deliberately forgets the obvious: that humanity is inextricably linked to its environment. He’s saying that it’s okay to extract, own and abuse the land so that white history can continue ... |
As the book from Bill Gammage, The Biggest Estate on Earth, illustrates, it doesn’t have to be this way. Before invasion, the country thrived under laws and custodianship, which have been under attack since the tall ships landed. Is it too late to turn towards a different mode of living with the land that takes guidanc... |
While the Australian state believes it has given human rights and equal citizenship to Aboriginal Australians, its assimilation policies remain intact. Country, the land and its gifts have been assimilated into the jurisdiction of white settler law, which contains the principles of ownership, appropriation and now inte... |
Our narratives of what’s important are so cut off from history – from the taking of healthy country away from guardians who lived their respectful and reciprocal law with it – that we are addicted to laws that allow us to commit violence against the very home we profess to love. |
While the world struggles to understand how we arrived in this position of planetary violence against earth, Australia has no excuse not to trace the origins of its relatively recent history of genocide and impending ecocide. If we kill, separate, assimilate and destroy the laws of the country that pre-existed white ar... |
Australia is a fragile ecology, and home to the oldest continuing law in the world. This law older than settlement law and scares white history senseless because the foundations of the Australian state are built upon unsustainable resource exploitation. |
This prior jurisprudence asks us to respect the land, to live lightly with it, to care and be custodians. It asks us to live with country and land as if our lives depended upon and were nurtured by it. Isn’t this exactly the kind of solution that global communities across the globe are trying to reinstate in order to l... |
Why would such principles of law need to be dismissed, erased and ignored? Can’t they become central to other legal systems and, if not, why not? While recycling, emission limitations, mitigation, adaption, and increased use of renewable energy are all fantastic methods to manage our current dilemma, they seem like des... |
The legal doctrine of terra nullius not only sought to erase the peoples that existed on the land that had been invaded, but also the laws that connected country to those peoples. Native title has never sought to reverse the deeper aspects of terra nullius: the erasure of indigenous jurisprudence. |
Like western jurisprudence, indigenous jurisprudence is not frozen in traditional time but speaks to the past, present and future through its interpretation of events. Dance, stories and ceremony are forms of legal transmission that continue still. The excuse that written law trumps this is arrogant denial. |
Invasion cut through indigenous jurisprudence as though it didn’t exist or belonged in museums and sepia notebooks of dead anthropologists. Unfortunately this was a fatal mistake that our grandchildren will hold us accountable for if they have to struggle in inhospitable environments that have been betrayed. |
One of the most resistant and violent points of the white nation state of Australia is not only the attempted erasure of indigenous peoples but, equally, their law and land and the recognition that this relationship continues. |
So while there are calls for indigenous people to be included in the Constitution, there should also be calls, given the connection of theses peoples to land and law in equal measure, for indigenous jurisprudence, and not only its criminal code but its deep law of land – to also be recognised. as these people are conne... |
She smiled wide. But she wasn’t talking about the colour of skin, but about the state of our souls, and how this moment, this seemingly long, violent moment, will eventually pass because it is unsustainable, and not only ecologically. |
Bronwyn Lay is an Australian writer, lawyer and independent researcher currently living in France. She recently completed a PhD at the European Graduate School on the relationship between law, nature, materiality and ecology. |
Bronwyn, I feel that I could, perhaps should, agree with your position, but I finished reading your article with a sense of "No thanks". I don't think the answer to our sustainability crisis is pre-settlement Aboriginal culture. How many Aboriginal people today would even want that? We have all the intellectual tools a... |
Hi Bronwyn, Can you be more specific about how our law might look were it to be influenced in the way you would like .... you mentioned the criminal code?? How do you suggest people be persuaded to change our laws in the way you suggest? |
Would only that those who need to read, understand and assimilate what Bronwyn has to say would. I fear not. |
Bronwyn, thank you. The Abbott government has a complacent, selfish philosophy like Louis 14th of "après nous, le deluge" . This massive cynical shrug of lack of concern for our children and grandchildren is pretty much mirrored by Lsbor though there is some hope of rationality there still. I put my heart and soul into... |
Yes Russell we have "all the intellectual tools and models we need to construct a better future" but they are not being used for that goal. Bronwyn points to the distorted values that are corrupting that goal. Values that are absent in a paliament that is leading us to an ecological armageddon. |
On this day of reflection on the type of Australia we would want, evoked by the death of Gough Whitlam,, your essay is most timely ,Bronwyn.. Tony Kevin's elaboration only Reminds us more of the need for creative , visionary leaders who are capable of ltaking nations ( and religions) along with them to create societies... |
When Australia's contribution to industrial pollution is so minimal within the world context it would seem to be highly dubious that we can blame our governments of any persuasion for leading us to an "ecological Armageddon". While we do export raw materials to industrialised countries we may indirectly contribute to t... |
This is a much-needed conversation, As a wadjella (non-Aboriginal person) living in Noongar country, I am repeatedly struck by the wealth of Indigenous knowledge that is not recognised by the various levels of government. It's not about 'pre-settlement Aboriginal culture', it's about answers that are in a living cultur... |
I am left dumbfounded at how a 'leader' could possibly ignore the experts and still think it is ok to continue to gouge the earth for a quick dollar! What about the future for all of us! |
I am currently away from Australia. I have commented to several that I find many of Tony Abbott's statements embarassing. 'Coal' is included. The reply is that the Australian people cannot really be surprised. AND THEY ELECTED HIM. Australians in toto have to wear the follies he is enunciating as our national position.... |
Bronwyn, stop using a computer. Its very existence is predicated on what you call extracting and abusing the land. Also, think carefully how much extraction and abuse enabled you, an Aussie, to be discussing climate change in a Scottish pub. |
Thanks for all the thoughtful comments. I find it interesting that indigenous jurisprudence is easily dismissed as frozen in the past and is anti-technological. Many questions arise. The recognition of principles that articulate the interdependence and inextricable links between the social/cultural worlds and the natur... |
Also, I'm curious. Does Bruno Latour, the famous French social scientist, support one of the now 50-odd disparate excuses for the 17 year failure of global temperatures to rise on the back of unprecedented injections of human generated greenhouse gases? Or does he have a typically French philosophical rococo (ie uninte... |
Bronwyn has a point here. We are currently destroying forever the productive capacity of vast areas of highly productive land just for a one-off profit from mining coal. This is extreme stupidity. We should maintain our good land so that it will continue to be productive. This is consistent with the indigenous land man... |
I have studied climatology for over 40 years . I can see the writing on the wall if we do not change our ways. Sadly some comments have totally missed Bronwyn's point. She is not asking us to go back to pre-settlement Aboriginal custom/law etc. She is asking us to learn from the respect the First Australians had for th... |
Dow New High, Another Stocks Bear Market Goes Up in Smoke, Forget QE Tapering Expect Expansion! |
The Dow Jones stocks index closed at another all time high of 15,676, catching many if not most so called market analysts off guard as for the duration of the stock markets latest correction could be found to be singing the new secular or cyclical bear market has begun mantra, despite the fact that many of whom have be... |
The latest excuse for being wrong once more is that Ben Bernanke apparently surprised all with his announcement for the continuation of money printing (QE) at the rate of $85 billion per month, though readers of my articles will know and understand that MONEY PRINTING CANNOT END whilst large budget deficits persist AND... |
That is the mega-trend that the worlds economies remain immersed in. To reiterate what I have stated literally dozens of times over the duration of the stocks stealth bull market that began in March 2009 (Stealth Bull Market Follows Stocks Bear Market Bottom at Dow 6,470 ), that there is no cyclical or secular ONLY BUL... |
My ebook of Feb 2013 (Stocks Stealth Bull Market Ebook for 2013 and Beyond ) reiterated at length what I consider to be the real secrets for successful trading which you can download for FREE! For the primary mechanism for being to be on the right side of the market is to be conditioned by the market through the mechan... |
In terms of the stock market, whilst my focus for the past year has been on the emerging housing bull markets, however, I am still targeting to have 20% of my wealth invested in stocks by the end of this year (current 20%). |
The following graphic illustrates the money printing exponential inflation cycle for the UK which also holds true for many other nations. |
My focus for over a year has been increasingly on the emerging US and UK housing bull markets, as I have increasingly flagged the much hated housing asset classes to focus upon for the UK and US as presenting a once in a decade opportunity as the embryonic bull markets of 2012 HAVE morphed into the new bull markets of ... |
As a guide of what one could consider doing to protect themselves from the ongoing money printing fraud, the following updated table illustrates how my portfolio is trending in terms of asset classes to protect both against inflation stealth theft and possible outright theft of bank deposits cyprus style. |
The bottom line is this - QE is a PANIC Measure, which means the worlds central banks remain in PANIC MODE! As I pointed out near 4 years ago in the Inflation Mega-trend ebook (FREE DOWNLOAD), they ONLY have one answer which is to PRINT MONEY! There is NO other answer! the consequences of which is INFLATION. SO, levera... |
All politicians and central bankers are infected by the highly contagious money printing virus! Forget Tapering, instead expect the next Fed Chairperson to EXPAND QE to MORE than $85 billion per month! - Remember you heard it here first! |
Hi Nadeem, I am very confused about your view that global inflation will rise following relentless extensions of QE. |
Robert Prechter has correctly predicted, since 2008, a Major Deflation scenario, with the recent run-up in the 10-year Treasury Note spiking at 3 % before resuming the clear downtrend. Prechter believes we are in a multi-year deflationary downtrend. |
Massive global Capex increases since 1980, Globalization with $1/hour wages, 'real' U.S. Unemployment of 23 % (if we calculate U1-U9 and ignore the ludicrous Birth-Death rate adjustment), huge increases in global Wealth Gaps that reduce worker bargaining power, and many other factors, suggest Prechter is correct. |
Obviously there are pockets of inflation in various sectors (U.K. house prices, for example, and occasional commodity spikes), but since Western governments are between a rock and a hard place they will keep interest rates low if they continue QE, and they will trigger a crash and a recession if they stop it. In either... |
My point is that the best investment, in either scenario, is in high grade, high dividend stocks with massive free cash flow and earnings that are at least double the dividend payout. I see this as a no-brainer. Am I correct. |
29 Sep 13, 08:10 Correct on what ? |
There has been NO deflation, pure delusion. |
There has been no debt deleveraging, another red herring, the derivatives soup is X times bigger! |
LOL for many years they were saying QE would be deflationary. |
So what did the deflationistas like above and Mike Shedlock get right ? specifically, show me a market, actionable entry and exit. |
29 Sep 13, 09:18 "Deflation Delusion" |
Since current 'inflation' is not intrinsic but caused by governmental Fiat, it will transform into 'deflation' once governments take their feet off the QE accelerator, since any official tightening will precipitate a crash. In this sense Prechter is spot-on. |
It's like if I lent you $ 1 million to buy a house, with no collateral, and you buy the house, take out a mortgage, buy a car and other consumer items ..... And imagine if millions of people did this, then the prices of houses, cars and everything else would rise. Now, if such lending suddenly stopped the temporary inf... |
In theory we would have had and will have deflation, in reality we won't. |
IF... is a big word to use. |
The govrnments and central banks have already printed enough money and debt to DOUBLE house prices (conservative stimate). |
I have heard the deflation threat for 5 years! why you should not buy stocks,x,y,z cos deflation is IMMINENT. Deflation is an academic argument made by vested interests or clueless commentators (not directed at you) that clearly never put their own money down because they would have gone broke betting on a bear market. |
Research - Fractional reserve banking, the Quadrillion+ of Derivatieves, the expoenntial inflatiob mega-trend. |
Even Mike Shedlock after being WRONG for 5 years is eventually turning Inflationista,. But he too would have gone broke had he folowed his own advice. |
29 Sep 13, 15:23 The Deflation Delusion??? |
I'm not one of those "commentators" who never put their own money down. In fact I've been investing millions of my own money successfully for 30 years. There are many factors that influence stock prices, this we all know, but to me the most important one is interest rates, in particular the 10-year TNote whose yield is... |
I bought more stocks in 2008 BECAUSE of the recession and low interest rates. I have held on till today and am looking for signs to lighten up but I don't see them as long as TNotes and TBills are at near historic lows. If QE ends these rates will go even lower because an initial spike will be followed by a rate-bustin... |
If there is inflation, or looming inflation, then why are TBill/Bond yields at historic lows, and what will it take to boost them? It would require genuine GDP growth, not CPI growth which will crash without GDP growth (most of which in any case is distorted in the form of inventory build-ups and other (negative-)posit... |
I simply do not see long lasting, demand-based inflation anywhere on the horizon. |
I edited my earlier comment, because I was not directing my general comments at you, sorry for that. |
U.S. Treasury yields, this is why I write indepth articles because one answer leads to another question, the answer is simple, the reason why yields are low is because the central banks are monetizing debt. |
My next indepth analysis WILL be on debt, then the one following that WILL be on inflation. |
29 Sep 13, 18:16 Inflation or deflation? |
" ..... the answer is simple, the reason why yields are low is because the central banks are monetizing debt." |
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