pictures – DECISION STATS

Geeks for Privacy: Play Color Cipher and Visual Cryptography

Maybe the guys in Anonymous or Wikileaks can now use visual cryptography while using Snapchat to fool the NSA or CIA

Personally I think a browser with inbuilt backdoors to Tor Relays and data transfer by Bit Torrrents could be worthy a project too.

Quit the bullshit, Google- you are as evil as The Russian Communist Empire

I was just reading up on my weekly to-read list and came across this interesting method. It is called Play Color Cipher-

Each Character ( Capital, Small letters, Numbers (0-9), Symbols on the keyboard ) in the plain text is substituted with a color block from the available 18 Decillions of colors in the world [11][12][13] and at the receiving end the cipher text block (in color) is decrypted in to plain text block. It overcomes the problems like “Meet in the middle attack, Birthday attack and Brute force attacks [1]”.
It also reduces the size of the plain text when it is encrypted in to cipher text by 4 times, with out any loss of content. Cipher text occupies very less buffer space; hence transmitting through channel is very fast. With this the transportation cost through channel comes down.

Reference-

http://www.ijcaonline.org/journal/number28/pxc387832.pdf

Visual Cryptography is indeed an interesting topic-

Visual cryptography, an emerging cryptography technology, uses the characteristics of human vision to decrypt encrypted
images. It needs neither cryptography knowledge nor complex computation. For security concerns, it also ensures that hackers
cannot perceive any clues about a secret image from individual cover images. Since Naor and Shamir proposed the basic
model of visual cryptography, researchers have published many related studies.

Visual cryptography (VC) schemes hide the secret image into two or more images which are called
shares. The secret image can be recovered simply by stacking the shares together without any complex
computation involved. The shares are very safe because separately they reveal nothing about the secret image.

Visual Cryptography provides one of the secure ways to transfer images on the Internet. The advantage
of visual cryptography is that it exploits human eyes to decrypt secret images .

ESPECIALLY SEE |THIS AND THIS

http://cacr.uwaterloo.ca/~dstinson/VCS-flag.html

and

http://cacr.uwaterloo.ca/~dstinson/VCS-pi.html

Even more fun—– visual cryptography using a series of bar codes – leaving the man in middle guessing how many sub images are there and which if at all is the real message

References-

Color Visual Cryptography Scheme Using Meaningful Shares

http://csis.bits-pilani.ac.in/faculty/murali/netsec-10/seminar/refs/muralikrishna4.pdf

Visual cryptography for color images

http://csis.bits-pilani.ac.in/faculty/murali/netsec-10/seminar/refs/muralikrishna3.pdf

Other Resources

http://users.telenet.be/d.rijmenants/en/visualcrypto.htm
Visual Crypto – One-time Image Create two secure images from one by Robert Hansen
Visual Crypto Java Applet at the University of Regensburg
Visual Cryptography Kit Software to create image layers
On-line Visual Crypto Applet by Leemon Baird
Extended Visual Cryptography (pdf) by Mizuho Nakajima and Yasushi Yamaguchi
Visual Cryptography Paper by Moni Noar and Adi Shamir
Visual Crypto Talk (pdf) by Frederik Vercauteren ESAT Leuven
http://cacr.uwaterloo.ca/~dstinson/visual.html
t the University of Salerno web page on visual cryptogrpahy.
Visual Crypto Page by Doug Stinson
- Constructions and Bounds for Visual Cryptography
  Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1099 (1996), 416-428 (23rd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming).
- Visual Cryptography for General Access Structures
  Information and Computation 129 (1996), 86-106 (this paper is an expanded and revised version of the conference paper).
- On the Contrast in Visual Cryptography Schemes
  Journal of Cryptology 12 (1999), 261-289.
- Extended Schemes for Visual Cryptography
  Theoretical Computer Science 250 (2001), 143-161.
- Threshold Visual Cryptography Schemes With Specified Whiteness Levels of Reconstructed Pixels
  Designs, Codes and Cryptography 25 (2002), 15-61.
- Contrast Optimal Threshold Visual Cryptography Schemes
  SIAM J. on Discrete Math. 16 (2003), 224-261.
- “Visual Cryptography: Seeing is Believing” availablehere,
- example- face http://cacr.uwaterloo.ca/~dstinson/VCS-happyface.html
- flag http://cacr.uwaterloo.ca/~dstinson/VCS-flag.html
- pi http://cacr.uwaterloo.ca/~dstinson/VCS-pi.html
Simple implementation of the visual cryptography scheme based on Moni Naor and Adi Shamir, Visual Cryptography, EUROCRYPT 1994, pp1–12. This technique allows visual information like pictures to be encrypted so that decryption can be done visually.The code outputs two files. Try printing them on two separate transparencies and putting them one on top of the other to see the hidden message. http://algorito.com/algorithm/visual-cryptography

Visual Cryptography

Moni Naor and Adi Shamir, Visual Cryptography , Eurocrypt 94. Postscript , gzipped Postscript
Moni Naor and Adi Shamir, Visual Cryptography II , Cambridge Workshop on Protocols, 1996. Postscript, gzipped Postscript
Moni Naor and Benny Pinkas, Visual Authentication , Crypto 97. Postscript, gzipped Postscript

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Ajay- I think a combination of sharing and color ciphers would prove more helpful to secure Internet Communication than existing algorithms. It also levels the playing field from computationally rich players to creative coders.

Funny Photos- it happens only in India 2

Raj Weds Deepika (with spelling error) and no, its not photoshopped

Translation- No Girlfriend No Tension (back of Truck).Note the amazing spelling in the picture above

Polite reminder- Please do not spit

Ok maybe this maybe an international thing- but it is funny in India (which is hot enough, thank you and our curries are hot enough!)

environmental sign

—–

Based on the award winning series of pictures at http://www.decisionstats.com/funny-photo-it-happens-only-in-india/

Interview Kelci Miclaus, SAS Institute Using #rstats with JMP

Here is an interview with Kelci Miclaus, a researcher working with the JMP division of the SAS Institute, in which she demonstrates examples of how the R programming language is a great hit with JMP customers who like to be flexible.

Ajay- How has JMP been using integration with R? What has been the feedback from customers so far? Is there a single case study you can point out where the combination of JMP and R was better than any one of them alone?

Kelci- Feedback from customers has been very positive. Some customers are using JMP to foster collaboration between SAS and R modelers within their organizations. Many are using JMP’s interactive visualization to complement their use of R. Many SAS and JMP users are using JMP’s integration with R to experiment with more bleeding-edge methods not yet available in commercial software. It can be used simply to smooth the transition with regard to sending data between the two tools, or used to build complete custom applications that take advantage of both JMP and R.

One customer has been using JMP and R together for Bayesian analysis. He uses R to create MCMC chains and has found that JMP is a great tool for preparing the data for analysis, as well as displaying the results of the MCMC simulation. For example, the Control Chart platform and the Bubble Plot platform in JMP can be used to quickly verify convergence of the algorithm. The use of both tools together can increase productivity since the results of an analysis can be achieved faster than through scripting and static graphics alone.

I, along with a few other JMP developers, have written applications that use JMP scripting to call out to R packages and perform analyses like multidimensional scaling, bootstrapping, support vector machines, and modern variable selection methods. These really show the benefit of interactive visual analysis of coupled with modern statistical algorithms. We’ve packaged these scripts as JMP add-ins and made them freely available on our JMP User Community file exchange. Customers can download them and now employ these methods as they would a regular JMP platform. We hope that our customers familiar with scripting will also begin to contribute their own add-ins so a wider audience can take advantage of these new tools.

(see http://www.decisionstats.com/jmp-and-r-rstats/)

Ajay- Are there plans to extend JMP integration with other languages like Python?

Kelci- We do have plans to integrate with other languages and are considering integrating with more based on customer requests. Python has certainly come up and we are looking into possibilities there.

Ajay- How is R a complimentary fit to JMP’s technical capabilities?

Kelci- R has an incredible breadth of capabilities. JMP has extensive interactive, dynamic visualization intrinsic to its largely visual analysis paradigm, in addition to a strong core of statistical platforms. Since our brains are designed to visually process pictures and animated graphs more efficiently than numbers and text, this environment is all about supporting faster discovery. Of course, JMP also has a scripting language (JSL) allowing you to incorporate SAS code, R code, build analytical applications for others to leverage SAS, R and other applications for users who don’t code or who don’t want to code.

JSL is a powerful scripting language on its own. It can be used for dialog creation, automation of JMP statistical platforms, and custom graphic scripting. In other ways, JSL is very similar to the R language. It can also be used for data and matrix manipulation and to create new analysis functions. With the scripting capabilities of JMP, you can create custom applications that provide both a user interface and an interactive visual back-end to R functionality. Alternatively, you could create a dashboard using statistical and/or graphical platforms in JMP to explore the data and with the click of a button, send a portion of the data to R for further analysis.

Another JMP feature that complements R is the add-in architecture, which is similar to how R packages work. If you’ve written a cool script or analysis workflow, you can package it into a JMP add-in file and send it to your colleagues so they can easily use it.

Ajay- What is the official view on R from your organization? Do you think it is a threat, or a complimentary product or another statistical platform that coexists with your offerings?

Kelci- Most definitely, we view R as complimentary. R contributors are providing a tremendous service to practitioners, allowing them to try a wide variety of methods in the pursuit of more insight and better results. The R community as a whole is providing a valued role to the greater analytical community by focusing attention on newer methods that hold the most promise in so many application areas. Data analysts should be encouraged to use the tools available to them in order to drive discovery and JMP can help with that by providing an analytic hub that supports both SAS and R integration.

Ajay- While you do use R, are there any plans to give back something to the R community in terms of your involvement and participation (say at useR events) or sponsoring contests.

Kelci- We are certainly open to participating in useR groups. At Predictive Analytics World in NY last October, they didn’t have a local useR group, but they did have a Predictive Analytics Meet-up group comprised of many R users. We were happy to sponsor this. Some of us within the JMP division have joined local R user groups, myself included. Given that some local R user groups have entertained topics like Excel and R, Python and R, databases and R, we would be happy to participate more fully here. I also hope to attend the useR! annual meeting later this year to gain more insight on how we can continue to provide tools to help both the JMP and R communities with their work.

We are also exploring options to sponsor contests and would invite participants to use their favorite tools, languages, etc. in pursuit of the best model. Statistics is about learning from data and this is how we make the world a better place.

About- Kelci Miclaus

Kelci is a research statistician developer for JMP Life Sciences at SAS Institute. She has a PhD in Statistics from North Carolina State University and has been using SAS products and R for several years. In addition to research interests in statistical genetics, clinical trials analysis, and multivariate analysis/visualization methods, Kelci works extensively with JMP, SAS, and R integration.

Does the Internet need its own version of credit bureaus

Data Miners love data. The more data they have the better model they can build. Consumers do not love data so much and find sharing data generally a cumbersome task. They need to be incentivize for filling out survey forms , and for signing to loyalty programs. Lawyers, and privacy advocates love to use examples of improper data collection and usage as the harbinger of an ominous scenario. George Orwell’s 1984 never “mentioned” anything about Big Brother trying to sell you one more loan, credit card or product.

Data generated by customers is now growing without their needing to fill out forms and surveys. This data is about their preferences , tastes and choices and is growing in size and depth because it is generated from social media channels on the Internet.It is this data that can be and is captured by social media analytics.

Mobile data is also growing, including usage of location based applications and usage of Internet from the mobile phone is leading to further increases in data about consumers.Increasingly , location based applications help to provide a much more relevant context to the data generated. Just mobile data is expected to grow to 15 exabytes by 2015.

People want to have more and more conversations online publicly , share pictures , activity and interact with a large number of people whom they have never met. But resent that information being used or abused without their knowledge.

Also the Internet is increasingly being consolidated into a few players like Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Facebook, who are unable to agree on agreements to share that data between themselves. Interestingly you can use Yahoo as a data middleman between Google and Facebook.

At the same time, more and more purchases are being done online by customers and Internet advertising has grown much above the rate of growth of other mediums of communication.
Internet retail sales have the advantage that better demand predictability can lead to lower inventories as retailers need not stock up displays to look good. An Amazon warehouse need not keep material to simply stock up it shelves like a K-Mart does.

Our Hypothesis – An Analogy with how Financial Data Marketing is managed offline

Financial information regarding spending and saving is much more sensitive yet the presence of credit bureaus alleviates these concerns.
Credit bureaus collect information from all sources, aggregate and anonymize the individual components accordingly.They use SSN as a unique identifier.
The Internet has a unique number too , called the Internet Protocol Address (I.P)
Should there be a unique identifier like Internet Security Number for the Internet to ensure adequate balance between the need for privacy as well as the need for appropriate targeting?

After all, no one complains about privacy intrusions if their credit bureau data is aggregated , rolled up, and anonymized and turned into a propensity model for sending them direct mailers.

Advertising using Social Media and Internet

https://www.facebook.com/about/ads/#stories

1. A business creates an ad

Let’s say a gym opens in your neighborhood. The owner creates an ad to get people to come in for a free workout.

2. Facebook gets paid to deliver the ad

The owner sends the ad to Facebook and describes who should see it: people who live nearby and like running.

The right people see the ad

3. Facebook only shows you the ad if you live in town and like to run. That’s how advertisers reach you without knowing who you are.

Adding in credit bureau data and legislative regulation for anonymizing and handling privacy data can expand the internet selling market, which is much more efficient from a supply chain perspective than the offline display and shop models.

Privacy Regulations on Marketing using Internet data
Should laws on opt out and do not mail, do not call, lists be extended to do not show ads , do not collect information on social media. In the offline world, you can choose to be part of direct marketing or opt out of direct marketing by enrolling yourself in various do not solicit lists. On the internet the only option from advertisements is to use the Adblock plugin if you are Google Chrome or Firefox browser user. Even Facebook gives you many more ads than you need to see.

One reason for so many ads on the Internet is lack of central anonymize data repositories for giving high quality data to these marketing companies.Software that can be used for social media analytics is already available off the shelf.

The growth of the Internet has helped carved out a big industry for Internet web analytics so it is a matter of time before social media analytics becomes a multi billion dollar business as well. What new developments would be unleashed in this brave new world is just a matter of time, and of course of the social media data!

Libre Office Templates and Extensions

Libre Office just announced a new repository for extensions and templates.

http://extensions-test.libreoffice.org/extension-center

Gallery of danger signs

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in Gallery Contents for all program modulesThis extension add 4 themes to your gallery with more than 400 cliparts dealing with security at work. Better than bitmap, cliparts are vector graphics in ODF …

Latest release compatible with: LibreOffice 3.3.4 , LibreOffice 3.3.3 , LibreOffice 3.3.2 , LibreOffice 3.3.1 , LibreOffice 3.3 , LibreOffice 3.4 , LibreOffice 3.4.1 , LibreOffice 3.4.2 Continue reading “Libre Office Templates and Extensions”