... has an investigative technique offered this much promise.
Researchers believe technology could be used to determine a computer typist's age, sex and culture within 10 keystrokes by monitoring their speed and rhythm. [...] Mr Butler, who heads Newcastle University's Cybercrime and Computer Security department, said: ''Roy's research has the potential to be a fantastic tool to aid intelligence gathering for crime fighting agencies, in particular serious and organised crime and for those tracking down paedophiles.
I expect this will require much more funding.
You know, I'm not a fan of Malcolm Gladwell, but he had a piece in the New Yorker last year saying "criminal profiling" was mostly crap, too.
It was pretty convincing...
Another "scientific" "discovery" made up from a few scraps of truth and a lot of wishful thinking?
38,SWM,CND
whoa it works! they're right!
Well, I'm excited. Nobody will come to my phrenology parties any more, so this could be just the thing.
What? No alchemy?
If these guys had ever heard of the Turing Test, they would have surely seen that any technology that could do what they claim would be immediately defeated. Why do so many people yearn for Big Brother?
BALDERDASH!!!!!!
I use the keyboard a lot differently when I am sober ... and really a lot differently when I take my medical marijuana.
So how old, drunk or high am I?
Amazing! I can tell a child an a paedophile apart with this simple test!
1. Display a blurry image of a nude adult.
2. Multiple choice. The first thing that comes to your mind is:
a. Gross.
b. Too old.
Speaking of repressed memory that is exactly what happen to me. So please don't poo poo it.
Turns out that when I was only a year old I bought a lottery ticket and it was a winner. And I just remembered it now during therapy so I will be suing Lott B.C. for 2 miilon dollars.
Hah! I'm training my pet chicken to peck the keyboard.....
I expect this will require much more funding.
LOL Kate :-)
More GD "scientists" throwing the good ones under the bus for some bucks.I went to a psych years back,and 3 mins into the intial assessement,the 2nd Q she asked me was "how long have you despised your mother and hated women?" Needless to say,out the door,and made damn sure my company DID NOT pay her and had her removed from the list of approved shrinks.
Now,how old am I,male/female,drunk or sober?
Just curious...Anyone doing a study on why there are still Liberals/Socialists in the world...Comments???
Kraut:
The same reason there are cults.
A certain element of the population would rather let somebody else do their thinking for them.
That way, they don't have to take responsibility for their own actions.
Thankfully for them, there are no shortage of people who are willing to run their lives.
So if you are multi-tasking can you expect a knock on the door? Are the ten keystrokes 'hand it over" ok that is more but inquiring minds crave the answer.
Mr. Butler did it. The rat.
...-
"Bloc MP helps police make big pot bust
CBC.ca - 2 hours ago
Bloc Quebecois MP Maria Mourani tipped off Montreal police to a large marijuana grow-op above her riding office. (CBC) Bloc Québécois MP Maria Mourani is being credited with helping Montreal police make one of the biggest marijuana plant busts in the"
pretty soon the pinheads could tell what brand of aszwipe someone used, within a reasonable time of course,,
Hi - real IT guy here, with at least some real-world experience in computer security.
This is a real thing - typing speed, length between keypresses, common mistakes, etc. are collectively called a user's fist and the technique has been used successfully to identify specific people (more commonly, used to determine when someone is impersonating a legitimate user).
Determining age, sex and culture within ten keystrokes is crap, but if you look at the actual article, what they're talking about is requiring sex offenders to register their typing patterns the same way they register DNA and fingerprints. Over the course of an IM conversation, it should be possible to get a pretty good match.
Funding always fixes everything, especially with welfare.
set you free
Thank you My thoughts eexactly
reg dunlop
You forgot " and a big fat cheque" courtesy of us silly taxpayers
set you free
Thank you My thoughts eexactly
reg dunlop
You forgot " and a big fat cheque" courtesy of us silly taxpayers
Sean @4:26 - any time; my bumps are fascinating.
daniel ream
and in less than 15 seconds I thought up a way to beat the damn "system", and I'm computer illiterate, smoke them bannanas
Well, obviously the thing to do is implement this theory immediately, without any extensive peer review!
Look how well it worked for climate change.
Having spent a lot of time timing keystrokes to sub-msec precision (back in the days when the average computer could easily do such a thing) there are clear individual temporal patterns in the typing of certain words and I suspect that these patterns are pharmacologically invariant (unless somebody is blind drunk). Windoze machines can only time keystrokes to about +/- 10 msec (unless one hacks the keyboard driver) and keystroke timing data under windoze is likely far too noisy to be of any use.
As far as identifying a persons age and sex in 10 keystrokes, all I have to say about this is BS. The only way in which a p*******e could be identified is if a keylogger was present on their computer; once keystrokes are on the network, inter-keystroke times are further muddled by variable packet transmission delays. I can tell if I'm physically typing on one of my machines or accessing it with VNC (I use keyloggers on all my machines for security and to find out how much time I spend online) as the keystroke timing patterns from VNC access are as groups of characters with very short intercharacter delays. It would also be trivial to write a program to change the timing of outgoing keystrokes on an internet connection.
Daniel Ream is quite correct about the use of keystroke timing analysis on a local machine for computer security applications; again assuming that someone hasn't hacked the OS to subvert keystroke timing.
This article is one of the most poorly written pieces of crap that I've read recently as it takes a kernel of truth and spins it into absolute BS. Perhaps the paper is running practice articles for 1/4/2010.
Sorry if this comes up twice; got caught in s**m filter and checking to see which words are unacceptable.
Snake oil sales are up.
Heaven knows why.
In the 19th century it was bumps on your noggin. Used in intellegence tests with as well nose size plus calibrations of the skull shape. All scientific like. They called it:
Reading Bumps and Faces;
Phrenology and Physiognomy
http://www.seanet.com/~raines/phrenology.html
Daniel Ream:
A third party could just as easily record (with a keylogger) a random person's fist and use that fist pattern no matter what their own is - a very short program would do the substitution. The data harvesting portion would be very similar to the very programs you use to characterize a person's fist. It could easily be part of a spambot. Now that the technique is publicly known it is near-useless.
Wow! Do you think we could apply the same technique to ferret out those who have a predeliction for doubting, ignoring, or laughing at AGW?
Oh yeah, we could? Well let's start building some re-education camps right now!
I wonder what Dragon's (NaturallySpeaking) fist looks like.
During WWII, it was often possible to identify Japanese ships by the way the(coded)messages were sent on a telegraph type sender. Turns out that the Japanese senders on the ships had a particular rhythm and pattern ..... identify the pattern/rhythm, identify the ship. Also, I believe conventional telegraph operators in the 1800s could be similarly identified. Consequently, I'm confident that with todays technology one could easily identify a particular sender by the same method. I'm not so certain about identifying the age and gender.