Slashdot Mirror

They're almost a private army. They're contracted for security at various military/secret stuff installations.

Yep. You know those guys in the white jeeps who will bust a cap in your ass if you get too close to Area 51/Groom Lake/Dreamland? That's Wackenhut.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

Since they are within 12 miles of their shores, Great Britain can easily come forward and claim what is rightfully theirs.

Nah...do a little research and you'll discover that in the 60's and 70's this was all worked out in the British courts. IIRC, some British citizen in a boat got too close to Sealand and the King of Sealand started shooting at him. The boater reported it to the police, who arrested (illegally) the King of Sealand for violating British laws. When he stood trial, his defence was that he was the king of a sovereign nation defending his territory and was no subject to British law. The courts pretty much agreed with im and set him free.

Again, this was back in the day before Britain claimed 12 miles of territorial water. When Britain expanded, I believe that Sealand did as well and that they share some of the same territorial waters (so that Sealand isn't boxed in).

There are some other interesting stories about a time when a German man tried to invade Sealand for his own purposes. The government of Sealand took him as a POW and the government of Germany was forced to negotiate with Sealand for his release. First the Germans tried going through Britain, but Britain washed it's hands of the matter because Sealand was a sovereign nation.

Sealand has a quite fascinating (albeit short) history.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

I was answering people's questions on Compuserve, Prodigy, Fidonet, and USENET since I was 12. Computer-related, not law-related questions, though. I think a lot of people here can say the same.

I do have a complaint about that though. Most of the people that I see handing out computer advice are woefully under-equipped to do so. Granted, most of the tech advice that I see is on discussion forums for certian games that I play, but most of it is junk. 80% of the time the response to a question will be "You need a new [COMPONENT]. Get [PRODUCT X] it's what I use and it works fine." Or something similar. The advice almost always includes throwing money at the probelm to clear it up when some careful tweaking would do. While often times that resolves the issue, it is usually a solution that is akin to killing a fly with a tactical nuke.

That always irritiates me. The next 19% of the advice that I see is blatantly wrong. I correct it when I see it usually. Finally, there is the 1% of answers that are correct. It just amazes me that somehow because a person can unpack a PC from a box marked "Compaq" and plug everything in that they think that qualifies them as a "hardware expert."

At any rate, I hope that the advice on Askme.com is more accurate than most of what I see on the Internet. Just because information is out there doesn't mean that it is correct.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

That's not uncommon at all. For many months my father (who is on medication for various illnesses) was plagued with a number of symptoms that indicated that he had a prolactinoma (a kind of brain tumor basically). After several months of tests and much discomfort and emotional difficulty, the doctors could find no evidence of an actual prolactinoma, even though the symptoms were a perfect match. They insisted that the CAT scans had to be wrong and sent him back for more. In the meantime, my mother (who only has a high school diploma) did some research on the Internet and discovered that identical symptoms could be caused by a certain medication that my father was in fact taking. She asked his doctor about it and after some research the doctor concurred with my mother's opinion. He changed the medication to a different type and the symptoms went away.

I shudder to think of all of the many thousands of dollars that his insurance company spent on tests for this non-existant brain-tumor when a simple search on the internet would have turned up a solution sooner.

I went through a similar situation when I was in high school (though we didn't have the Internet back then) where I saw 12 different doctors and had numerous tests to diagnose a medical disorder that is very commonplace in the US, but is very uncommon in teenagers. None of the doctors knew what was causing my problems, but a friend of the family who had the same condition spotted it right away when he heard the symptoms.

It's all about information. And sometimes it takes a naive person who doesn't have 8 years of professional training to be humble enough to ask for a solution.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

On top of that, your lawyer must be knowledgeable about precedences that have been set (i.e. decisions on similar cases in the past), as precedences carry a lot of weight. Judges/juries must often follow precedence despite their personal misgivings in order to facilitate equal protection under the law (i.e. if Joe gets fined $500 for X, everyone else should be fined $500 for X... but in order to know that, your lawyer would have had to know about Joe vs. Foo). It is this staggering (and ever growing!) ammount of information that you are paying your lawyer to possess.

I don't know about that. IANAL, but it seems to me that the majority of the whole "being a lawyer" thing is being familiar with how the various court systems work and how to manage reference sources. No lawyer knows all the precedents in his field. They likely know a few of the major ones in his area of specialty at best. The value in a lawyer is being someone who may not know the answer but knows how to get it and present it in the courts. They still have to do all the research for their filings once they have a notion of which way they want to go. And over time perhaps their knowledge of precedent and obscure laws grow. But that hardly means that a layperson couldn't learn to practice law as well as or even better than a lawyer.

It's like I tell all of my prospective employers: You're hiring me for 2 things. First, I have a sizeable amount of knowledge and 3 years experience in my field. I will have many answers off the top of my head. Secondly, for those answers that I do not have, I know how to find them and I have the understanding to be able to use them. Sure, you could hire someone with 3 times the knowledge that I have and pay 3 times as much for it. Or they could hire me and get a much better value.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

That's the best way to go, because it felt like a long cut-scene. It was beautiful graphically, but Katz does have some good points:

One, the plot was pretty weak. In most movies, you have the baseline life, followed by a conflict, followed by a search for a remedy to the conflict, which finally climaxes and ends with an epilogue. At least that's the way that we do it in the states. In the FF movie, we start with the baseline and conflict having already been assumed, as well as the search for the remedy. They come in working towards what should be a climax, but since we have nothing to compare it with it doesn't seem like there was a climax. Finally the movie ends with a mellow song, with no explanation of life post-climax. Overall I think that it really reminds me of a lot of the anime that I've seen...pretty to look at, but hard to follow.

Secondly, the "acting." Most of the time the scenes were beautifully done, but you could tell which ones were done by an animater and which ones were done with motion-capture. There is a very obvious difference in the movie. The motion-capture scenes were great. The range of facial expressions were iffy at best. Some of the simpler expressions (like when one of the women gives somebody the "cold shoulder treatment") were very realistic. I actually thought to myself, "Boy have I seen that expression before." Smiles were well done. But the more intense emotions (fear, rage, pain) were not displayed very well at all in their characters, making them seem somewhat...weak. I don't recall seeing the characters really blinking at all, which for some reason gave everything a dream-like quality. It's funny how you don't notice something so commonplace until it is gone.

Overall, I was pleased with the effort. But then I only went to see the technology, not for the story.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

Who is complaining when coca-cola buys another soft-drink brand ?? No one, but fact is that almost every thing you drink is owned by coca-cola and produced in country's where 14 year old kids are working in factory's and earn a wage of what you and I couldn't live half a day of. But do I hear complains about that ??

No, you don't. Because it's a blatant lie.

Granted, Coca-Cola is no saint (just check out the article entitled "Coca-Karma" on the GNN web site). But Coca Cola is produced and bottled locally. Most major cities have a Coca-Cola bottler that takes care of producing the product for their region. And most of the bottlers aren't even owned by Coca-Cola, they merely license the formula and packaging. Are there Coca-Cola bottling plants in 3rd-world countries that pay 14-year olds to bottle coke? Probably (though the lines are mostly automated so plentiful cheap labor isn't that much of an issue), but they are bottling their own Coke that will be sold in their own country at their own relative prices.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

obtw- Intel does not own the Athlon core, only the Alpha EV6 bus it runs on.

Which AMD already licensed from Compaq/Digital, so they should have rights to it for as long as they need them. This is further encouraged by statements from Compaq offiers that the sale of the Alpha designs to Intel were not an exclusive deal, so it would seem that Compaq/Digital could continue to license the technology to additional companies.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

UO was in a constant state of beta test (Charging users $10 a month for the privilidge) for as long as the Linux client worked. And you couldn't just stand around and chat or practise your skills without some obnoxious fuck coming along and pickpocketing you or trying to kill you by manipulating the game (or both.) It got really old really fast.

I never played on the Linux client (wasn't even aware that there had been one), but I'm not surprised that development for it lagged behind that of the Windows client. That's been par for the course for years on most software that originates on Windows.

As far as the in-game halfwits go, that problem has been largely done away with when they split the worlds in facets. There's one facet where anything goes, and another where you cannot PK and stealing doesn't work. It's pretty simple to travel between the two with your character, so most of those problems have gone away while still allowing the player to choose which style they enjoy more. Nowdays the worst problem you tend to encounter is a foul-mouthed punk, but you'll get those in any game and they're easy enough to ignore or block.

I started playing when the game was released in 1997 and only played for a couple months because I kept getting PKed and it was painful to play over a 24kbps dialup connection. I got back into it about a year and a half ago and have been going strong since.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

BTW: The asian game has its own unique problems... From what I hear, the police over there have special RL/PK units to combat the new phenomenon of taking RL revenge on an in-game PK.

Yes, I've read similar articles. There is apparently some organized crime/gang influence in the situations that you describe. However, I think that is perhaps more of a cultural issue than a game issue.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

As an example, Asheron's Call from Microsoft. 30,000 players and an average concurrent userbase of over 2000 per 'world'. Heck, even Everquest is still going. Asheron's Call has been in continuous operation since 1999 with content and feature updates EVERY MONTH.

Microsoft may be the distributor, but they sure didn't code it. Do you really think that MS could make a product that would support 2000 concurrent anythings?

Besides, you left out the grandaddy of them all: Ultima Online. The original and still the best, it's been chugging along for 300,000+ users (makes Asheron's Call look like a drop in the bucket!) since October of 1997. And they have regular content/scenario updates as well.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

The excuse "it's a big project, this is hard, noone has done this before" has worn damn thin after being repeated by so many people who should have learned the lessons of others.

That's why I can't wait until Richard Garriott's new company eventually releases their MMORPG. Most of the people who work for him now are former Ultima Online and Ultima Online 2 developers. They've been through it, and they know how it works. And Garriott is the kind of guy that (assuming the company lets him) will make sure that it's very playable and clean before it gets released (his more recent problems with UO and Ultima IX were largely related to EA's pushing). And I think that they'll have the financial stability to be able to pull it off because their first project isn't going to be their game, but instead porting and supporting one from a Korean company (that is insanely successful in Asia).

So they picked a relatively simple but cash-generating venture for their first attempt so that when they get around to making their own game they will have the money and tons of experience with different MMORPG systems. Great idea, eh?

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

What if the user base they sold to figure out they've been sold a bill of goods (which is what appears to be happening right now...)- they're going to be leaving in droves and spreading the word about the game being a piece of crap.

Yes, but that's not what they're concerned about. If they run out of cash, it's "game over." If they get an injection of cash that carries them through what should have been the beta period, then they'll probably make out OK eventually.

Remember, they aren't looking at what happens over the next year and a half. They are looking long-term. Ultima Online has been around for nearly 4 years and it not only going strong, but growing. Ultima Online had some pretty serious issues when it finally released as well (and it was pioneering the MMORPG genre, so it was even worse then), but they managed to fix it up quite nicely. I'm sure that the AO people are hoping for the same thing.

The other thing to remember about a company that is out of cash and about ready to go under: they never do what is "right" for their customers or their employees. They do what they believe will give them the immediate influx of cash to have the company survive, even if it means cutting off their arms to do it.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

You're making a false connection. I wasn't implying that by teaching the kids how to use the command-line that they would magically have knowledge of the workings of PCs. I was implying that if you started with the simplistic pictures of a GUI, and once that is mastered then move on to the more abstract/less intuitive command-line interfaces, you will have covered the whole of the system pretty well in a graduated manner.

One of the benefits of the command-line interface is that you can easily chain together series of commands or scripts to create bigger scripts and mini-programs to get the system to do exactly what you want. You learn the kinds of commands that the OS uses behind it's pretty GUI. You learn the principle of a directory tree (which most people completely miss if they've only been trained on the GUI interface). If you teach someone how to use a command-lines interface, they will come out of it with a much more complete understanding of the OS than they would if you told them to just point and click because you actually have to learn something about the computer rather than relying on an intuitive user interface.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

But the only thing they give out are harmless gasses such as oxygen and hydrogen.

Harmless? I wouldn't call them harmless. Maybe not even mostly harmless. Remember the Hindenberg? :-)

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

Unless it clouds over in which case it can take much longer to get to the finish line.

Probably, but not much longer. Many of the designs (if not all of them) incorporate some sort of battery system. The solar cells provide energy to drive the motor, but they also charge a battery to be used when it's not as bright out/overcast. I also wouldn't be suprised if they incorporated some sort of energy reclamation system into the brakes (like the one on the Honda Insight) to help keep the battery charged.

Granted, a couple days of serious overcast/thunderstorms would cause quite a bit of delay, but then the car that was most efficient would probably have an advantage (having larger energy reserves, being able to build power on lower light levels). That's the cool thing about engineering races.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

There isn't enough solar energy striking an area the size of a car to power one effectively.

Yes, these aren't conventional cars in any way, especially not in appearance. Many of the ones that I've seen from races in the past look like very long, wide, flat beetles (the insect, not the VW) so as to increase the surface area that is being hit by sunlight. They are usually the size of a couple of conventional cars.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

People were irritated with DS9 and Voyager because they focused specifically on action and special effects. When that didn't work they swung to the other extreme of becoming cardboard cutout soap operas. (Remember the whole Worf/Dax thing? Shudder.) TNG had that perfect balance of action and interpersonal relationships.

But what DS9 had that TNG comepletely missed out on was depth of plot.

In TNG you got 37 minutes of story (74 if it was a two-parter) that was wrapped up neatly in the end. There were one or two plotlines per episode and that was it. The best exception to this rule of thumb were the series of episodes surrounding the Klingon succession and Worf's family.

With DS9 you got a whole series with several major plotlines weaved throughout for the duration. You had Bajor vs Cardassia, Federation vs. Dominion, Wormhole Aliens and the Prophets, Alternate Reality with the (very naughty but oh-so-fun) "bad" Kira, and so on. These were major themes from the beginning until the end, and they kept the series interesting. It was what compelled me to keep watching, even though they had a couple bad eipsodes. It created a sense of investment in the series.

Don't get me wrong, I liked TNG. Voyager I could forget about (and largely I did). But I think that DS9 was the best of the four series.


Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

Yes, but I bet the cellphone that's 1/3 the size of your flip-phone isn't powerful enough to reach from a planet's surface to an orbiting spaceship without using repeater towers. Think more along the lines of a satellite phone.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

But why a prequel?

To show George Lucas how it's really done.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

BTW, for those that don't know, M$ has free viewers for most of their file formats available for download. Not that I expect your average teach to know this.

The problem with that is that when you have to make a revision or correction you're SOL.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

The education about Free Software has to occur while the teachers are still learning...in college. Get the colleges and universities to promote this in their classrooms.

Now it's been 7 or 8 years since I was in college, but that the time there was no requirement for people majoring in education to take any computer classes whatsoever. I desperately hope that this has changed, but I suspect that it has not since it is often assumed nowdays that anybody who has graduated from high school or college would have to have learned how to use a PC during the course of completing their studies.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

), and he said the teachers got VERY excited about emoticons. i submit that most of the teachers in elementary schools don't have the first idea how to use COMPUTERS.

You can extend that to include most teachers at most schools regardless of the level of students that they are teaching. There are obvious exceptions in more affluent school districts, but for the majority of them the above is true. Most public schools simply don't have the money to train their staff. Period. I live in Ohio, and here we have a state requirement that in order for a teacher to retain their state teaching certificate/license that they must complete a certain amount of continuing education on a regular basis. Unfortunately, this is generally considered the teacher's responsibility, NOT the school district's (though again some more affluent districts do cover the costs).

There is actually quite a debate going on now in the Ohio Supreme Court that has me somewhat excited about the future of Ohio's education systems. The state legislature is being forced to completely revamp the way that school districts receive funding because the current system (based on property taxes within the district) was ruled unconstitutional. Under the property tax system the discrepancy was mid-boggling. The poorest school district in the state (in the hills of southeastern Ohio) only had an average of $300 to spend per student. The richest school district in the state (an affluent suburb of Cleveland) had $13,000 per student. I don't know how it's going to finally be sorted out as it's still in debate but I think that it is important to note the size of the discrepancy. Most schools just don't have the money to properly train their students, let alone train the teachers.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

Right or wrong, it is HUGELY important these days that people learn to use MS applications. There are far more jobs for high school students and college students that require people who know Word and Excel than there are jobs that require people to know StartOffice or Gnumeric.

No it's not. It's not important at all. As many have pointed out, if you understand the concepts behind StarOffice, PerfectOffice, etc, then you can figure out MS-Office with little difficulty whatsoever. Beyond that, the specifics of what they are taught about how to use MS-Office XP in 9th grade will be obsolete by the time they finish High School or college and the company they work for is using Office XP+2 or XP+4. The only thing that is going to make them the least bit proficient is going to be an understanding of the basic concepts of a word processor, spreadsheet, etc. And they can get that from free software just as easily, and much more cheaply.

But here's my other point: most of the people that I've had to work with in the past 8 years or so since I've been out of school have been essentially clueless about how to use even the basic MS-Office or Windows functions. "What do you mean by right-click? I clicked on the right thing!" "You mean you can open Excel without double-clicking on a spreadsheet?" "Drag and drop? What's that?" "I don't go into the Start button because I might mess something up. I only run programs that are already on the screen [she meant desktop]." I used to get stuff like that all the time. Companies in the tech biz tend to be an exception to the above, but in every non-tech company I've worked at the level of computer literacy is as close to zero as could be possible.

Some people may claim that this is because the people I've worked with never had the advantage of working with PCs in school. While this may be true, they are also the same people who have been working with PCs during the course of their jobs for the last 10 years, and they've managed to learn almost nothing.

So with the lack of computer literacy in business in mind, I think that it's more important to a) teach basic concepts and how to learn new ones in schools, and b) let the businesses train new employees on the specifics of doing a mail-merge in Word.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

Today, if you don't have at least a degree from a two-year college, you can't get a job that will pay enough to support a family.

Not quite true. I know plenty of people in the tech industry who do not have degrees who make anything from $50,000/year up to $100,000/year. Granted, I wouldn't care to support a family at the lower end of the spectrum (at all actually, but for arguments sake let's say that I'm a family man) but it would certainly be possible if the family weren't too big and one were careful with their money. Their are a lot of lower-middle-class families in the US who manage to get by on less.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

What a masterful troll, I salute you.

You forgot to point out that he claims to be living in Kansas, home of the "Let's not teach evolution anymore because it's wrong" State Board of Education. That's how I finally knew it was a troll.


Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

The younger the kids, the more annoying these inconsistancies become. And then you turn kids off to computers.

I dunno about that. I'm pretty annoyed by the ridiculous number of inconsistent things that you have to do in Super Mario 69,000 and Legend of Zelda 42 in order to get the Vorpal Sword of Punishing Wrath and Bubbles, yet my 9 year old nephew can do it with his eyes closed and one hand tied behind his back. Kids have far more capacity to learn than those of us who are older and stuck in our ways. Kids are constantly learning about life and the world anyway, so it isn't much of an extra effort for them.

My thinking is that if you teach a kid how to use Gnome and/or KDE in grade school and then teach them how to use the command line in middle and high school, they'll come out of it with a pretty good knowledge of the workings of PCs. And after learning Linux figuring out Windows and MS apps ought to be a snap.

Or stick with the Mac and OSX platform for grade school (pretty point and click) and then when they get older teach them about the BSD system that's sitting under all of it.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

Did he have permission to install/run the client on the computers? We don't have a solid answer to this one, but I would suspect a court would find the answer was yes. The school employed him to administer the computer. In liu of giving him explicit instructions, they were relying on him to A) Stay within the bounds of the law (eg, no illegal copies of software) and B) use his best profesional judgement on the best way to admin the machine.

You're assuming that he was the admin. He uses the term "configurator." To me this implies that he is a guy from desktop support who was told to make a standard image for all of the PCs in the system. In such a case, they are usually provided with a list of standard apps and configurations to use.

I could be wrong, but I've yet to meet an Admin who called himself anything but Admin (or guru or god).

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

He did "administer" the machines.

I thought that he said that he was the "configurator." To me, that means that he's the guy who made the Ghost image that was deployed on 500 machines statewide. That's quite a difference from the "administrator," the person who in the end is responsible for all of the day-to-day workings of the systems under his control.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

That sounds really familiar. I recall in my college days having to drive one of my friends to court in another state. Her previous employer had apparently caught her red-handed pocketing cash from the register. I can't remember how much it was, other than it was around $1000 (over the course of several months).

So anyway we waited and waited through the preceeding cases. One of them was a man who was being given his second DUI conviction. He got a sentence that was mostly suspended, so he actually wound up having to serve 3 days. Before the bailiff took him off to the county jail, the defendant complained that he had already missed the dinner meal at the jail (he'd apparently been in before and knew the feeding schedules) and asked if he could go across the street and grab a hamburger before he went in, and the judge let him.

My friend was given a sentence of 30 days, suspended down to 3 days to serve, plus having to pay restitution, plus 100 hours of community service. I normally would have considered that a reasonable sentence for the crime, had the DUI guy not been in front of us. Sometimes it makes me wonder...

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

Nah. I'd vote for River Phoenix since he did such a good job at the beginning of "Last Crusade." Oh, wait a minnit...damn.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

I wonder if the third world will end up being the futuristic society that we have been promised since the 1940's? It's interesting that because of first-world dependence on backwards compatible technologies (ie, gasoline engine, coal burning power plants, etc) that the newer and more environmentally friendly technologies are taking root in the third world nations. I guess I think of it as getting a chance to (technilogically) start over with a clean slate in many cases instead of having to work within the somewhat outdated framework of modern, first-world technology.

Just a thought anyways.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

Either way cash is the way to go, but it gets harder/more inconvient every day to use cash.

I agree. I sometimes wonder if businesses would accept cash at all if it didn't have the magic phrase, "This note is legal tender for all debts, public or private" printed on it.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

There is another solution to these grocery savings cards, keychains etc. Use another grocery store!

That would be my ideal solution as well, but it is not feasible where I live. There are three large grocery stores in my area (Big Bear, Kroger, and Giant Eagle) and they are all part of large chains that have the same kind of plan. Kroger and Big Bear didn't use to have the cards, but Giant Eagle came into town with their discount card and all of the Kroger and Big Bear customers started complaining that they wanted a discount card program to, so they implemented one. So now I have to pay extra for my groceries in order to maintain my privacy.

On the other hand I do pay for a lot of my groceries using checks which allow them the same tracking ability.

While this may be possible, it sure isn't easy. With the discount card system they scan your card (your identity) with your groceries and a computer can correllate everything. With a check they would have to at least do the footwork manually, and even then they wouldn't have your consent to do it. I'm pretty sure in the T&Cs for the discount card there is something in there permitting them to collect personal information on you.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

By the power vested in my by Godwin's Law, I hereby declare this thread ended.

That's funny, I hadn't read about it before. Still, it wouldn't come about if it weren't accurate. Doing something "for the public good" implies that the public doesn't have the good sense to do what's good for them to begin with. While in some cases that's accurate, in most cases it is not.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

Well, you obviously have a sense of humor, so I won't be too much of a dick about this to you.:-)

Right. Let's start with your last comment. Those cameras you see all over britain are public cameras, owned and operated either by local councils (government departments), or by the police. What is wrong with them knowing where you are? They're not going to pull you over and try and sell you stuff.

But are you being monitored by the cameras? Yes. And that was my point, that there is a lot of monitoring done by the government in Britain. It doesn't matter to me if it's for "public safety" or not, it's still monitoring and it's not the job of my government to babysit its citizens. I wonder what happens if I resemble someone who is wanted for a crime? Are the chances good that I'll actually get stopped and dragged to the police station for questioning? I seem to recall a similar case recently.

What, exactly, are you trying to get away from?

I don't have to be trying to get away from anything or anybody simply because I want privacy. I want privacy for privacy's sake, that way I don't have to worry about who is watching me or why when I'm taking care of my personal matters. It's just creepy to think that you shouldn't have that right.

If you work in a shady part of town, every time your car gets broken in to raises the premiums of the people who actually put their car where they say, which is unfair on them, and technically insurance fraud.

In the US, insurance regulations vary by state. Where I live I am only required to disclose the primary address where the car is parked (home), whether it is garaged or parked on the street, the approximate annual mileage driven, the purpose of the car (daily driver to work or just a sunny weekend getaway car), and if I drive it to and from work the approximate round-trip mileage to and from work. There is no requirement to disclose where I work or where the car is parked while at work. But if the insurance companies in the US had some legal way of finding this out they would certainly use it against us if they could.

Maybe that's why you don't want the feds on your trail?

I don't want the feds on my trail because they cannot be trusted to enforce the laws that we have in the manner that they are currently implemented. Why should I allow them to further complicate matters when I don't have to? Why should I allow my government to have new powers when they can't be trusted with what they've got?

The number of credit cards issued in your country far surpasses the number issued in the rest of the world. That alone means that every single one of those cards can be traced when used. And not to mention that ralph's savings thing on your keyring ;)

We could swap our credit cards for your security cameras. Monitoring has degrees. I personally don't use credit cards (only cash except on purchases larger than $1000 or so, though I often write a check instead) and I certainly don't use those grocery store discount keyrings that track my purchases and send me junk-mail based on it. I pay the higher price for the food and am glad to retain what little privacy I have left. But even so, I'd much rather have someone monitor my grocery habits than to be on camera 24/7 except for when I'm in my own home.

Your paranoia that every tracking facility is open to any private business with cash to burn is slightly unfounded.

It may be now, but the future isn't that far off. In the US it is very common for most office buildings to have cameras mounted outside so that corporate security can monitor the goings-on at the property. They can use this information in any way they see fit. Acme rent-a-car tracks you for commercial purposes, as do most store discount key-ring tags. Your mobile phone company monitors your usage patterns and combines it with the usage patterns of other subscribers to create calling packages that maximize their profits (and your monthly statement). And it keeps on going from there. In the US, the overwhelming majority of the monitoring that goes on is done by business, not government.

All I can say is I'm glad I don't share insurance companies with you, and I'm watched by cameras. and that chip in my head (pesky CIA).

Har har.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

Correct me if I'm wrong here but Acme, as a car rental company are well within their rights to impose terms and conditions when they lease their property to another party.

Assuming that the terms and conditions are legal and enforceable, probably. But apparently the T&Cs in this case are neither legal nor enforceable.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

What is the loss of the phone company when you make a phone call when the ciruits are not full? Nothing. OK, maybe a tiny fraction of electricity, and the potential that the circuits fill.

The phone company provides their service to you 24/7, whether you are making a call at the time or not. You're paying in some part for the availability of the service.

What is the loss of the car company when you speed? Nothing. OK, maybe a tiny fraction of a reduced mechanical lifetime, and the potential that you get into an accident and cause the company's insurance rates to go up.

With the rental car you are already paying for the availability of the car in rental and insurance fees. But what the court said is that you can't bill somebody for the "potential" of them causing you damages. Otherwise the phone company would bill you for the "potential" of you cutting down a tree in your yard because it might fall on their phone lines.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

If the contract states that speeding incurrs a charge, how is it relevant what mechanism was used to determine that the driver was speeding?

Because if the device isn't able to accurately determine whether speeding actually occurred, then how can they have a basis for charging the customer? GPS isn't perfect. Neither is a car's speedometer. They often don't agree.

Also, bear in mind that just because it's been written into a contract and signed doesn't mean that it's legal or even enforceable. If the rental contract had said that speeding would result in the rental clerk getting the right to live with you rent-free for a month it probably wouldn't be enforceable.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

Provided that they tell you beforehand, can anyone supply a compelling reason why it's immoral or unethical for them to monitor one of their cars with GPS?

Yes. The GPS system can be subject to signal outages (GPS is line-of-sight, remember) which sometimes register as ludicrous fluctuations in speed.

Also, the speedometer on the car isn't likely to be calibrated to match the accuracy of the GPS system. It's possible for the speedometer to read 65 MPH while the GPS reads it at 72 MPH. Which system do you trust? Which system is more accurate? Does the driver even have the GPS data available to him? From the last time that this article was posted, it seemed clear that the GPS/tracking system was hidden inside the car to prevent tampering, so I doubt that there is an LCD readout for the driver to use.

There are some occasions when it is considered appropriate to exceed a posted speed limit such as accelerating to avoid a potential accident, accelerating to merge with high-speed traffic, etc. The GPS system will record these incidents as violations while a police officer wouldn't even look twice at them.

It is unreasonable to assume that Acme has a system in place of monitoring the posted speed limits on every section of road in their part of the country. Rand McNally has a hard time trying to keep their maps accurate as new roads pop up and freeway interchanges are built and re-built. How much easier is it to change a posted speed limit than to build a new road? What Acme had on file as a 45 MPH construction zone may now be an open stretch of 65 MPH freeway. How can they guarantee that their records are 100% accurate?

The system in place at Acme does not take any of these common occurances into account. It merely logs each instance where the "speed limit" is exceeded and automatically charges your account for it, even before you've returned the car. It is judge, jury and executioner with no right of appeal. And even if there were a right of appeal, the often transient conditions that would result in the GPS system registering excess speed wouldn't be feasible to prove in any convincing way.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

MY experience with digital speedometers is that they suck.

Not necessarily so. A speedometer is a speedometer is a speedometer. The ones with digital displays are just that - digital displays. They still get the data that they display in roughly the same manner as analog speedometers. The problem is, it's damn near impossible to make a speedometer that is 100% accurate. Even the best of them have some small variation in them. The faster you go, the more the variation comes into play and the more inaccurate a speedometer becomes. There is also some degree of drift in the speedometer, meaning that the longer the speedometer goes without calibration the less accurate it tends to be. Changing the diameter of the tires/wheels (total sum diameter) can also increase the inaccuracy of the speedometer.

Taking all of that into account, I'm not really suprised about your 113 MPH speeding ticket. But you're damn lucky to get off on only $55. In Ohio I've paid $85 for being only 19 MPH over the limit, but the fines are increased based on speed increments. Being +20 MPH jacks up the fine in a big way.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

Most often the GPS is much closer than the speedometer. It may jump up and down a couple MPH due to position errors going past overpasses, tall buildings, heavy forest etc, but the average is dead on.

Too bad they aren't fining you based on your average speed.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

So that means that we must condemn a company that tries to do a socially responsible thing? If its benificial to other people and gives them a profit thats like win-win isn't it?

Because they aren't doing it to be socially responsible. If they wanted to be socially responsible, they would work out a deal with law enforcement agencies and transmit the evidence of speeding to them and then let the people who are charged with enforcing the law handle it. But they wouldn't do that because it wouldn't make them money. So instead they decide to charge $150 per violation and conveniently neglect to mention it to law enforcement. Then when they get called out on it they try to hide behnd some thin veneer of "we did it for the public good." Well...the Nazi's used that same excuse, as did Stalin, and just about every other abusive regime in the history of man. Coming from a business though, it holds even less water.

And it's not a win-win, it's a lose-huh?-win (driver, society, and company).

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

Funny thing I drive a motorbike without a front license plate.

That's a nice out. Here in the US license plates are issued by the individual states. Some require front and rear plates while others only require front plates. So even in a state that requires both you can get off the hook quite a bit by just not putting one on the front.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

Remember what "speed limit" actually means. It means less than or equal to. So drive at 25MPH all the way through the various speed zones.

In the US this is not the case. Most freeways have a minimum speed limit, even if it is not posted. There's also a "safe conditions" clause in most US traffic laws that stipulate that you should drive at a speed that is appropriate for the situation. For example, you shouldn't drive 55 MPH in a posted 55 MPH speed zone in a blinding rainstorm or if the roadway is covered in ice. To do so would be unsafe. In the same fashion, it would be considered unsafe to drive at 25 MPH on the freeway in a 55 or 65 MPH zone. It's basically a commonsense law, I can't imagine that most countries wouldn't have something similar.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

The method by which they find you speeding does not matter - you were BREAKING THE LAW, and being otherwise dangerous.

I don't know how it is in Australia, but here in the US if you are BREAKING THE LAW, only the LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY WHO HAS JURISDICTION can cite you or arrest you for it. We do not support vigilante law enforcement.

So, why are we protecting the crims?

Criminals? You make it sound like we're trying to protect serial killers from prosecution here. This is just a simple speeding violation, it's not even a criminal act in the US. In most jurisdictions there is even a court or judicial system that exists entirely separately from the Criminal and Civil courts to handle these issues (called traffic court or mayor's court in smaller towns).

I would have aplauded this company - trying to save their cars from getting stolen, and possibly saving lives at the same time!

You also would have totally neglected to look into the technical issues involved as well.

For starters, not all speedometers are properly calibrated. Many are off by 5 MPH or more. In the days before radar guns, police cars would have to regularly have their speedometers calibrated and there would need to be records kept (since the main evidence was a cop claiming that he was driving the speed limit and the defendant was driving faster than the cop). If the speedometer reads 55 MPH and you're actually driving 60 MPH then what is your recourse to a company that has already fined you before you even return the car (as happened in the original case)?

On top of that, consider that a GPS speed monitoring system isn't 100% accurate. GPS relies on line-of-site to a satellite. If the signal is obstructed (like when passing through a tunnel) then the GPS system will register ridiculously high speeds (1000+ MPH in some cases). While these cases are obvious to spot, what happens if the GPS loses it's signal for 2 or 3 seconds at freeway speeds? Suddenly your 55 MPH might look more like 80 MPH. Once again, you would be fined before you even knew about the alleged speeding and would have no way to dispute it.

So keep in mind that the pros in this case aren't nearly as clear-cut as you would like to believe. Acme rent-a-car wasn't doing this for the public good either...it was all about the money.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

Who cares if Rental car places know where you're going? It's not like that hurts you in any way whatsoever, while it gives the company extra security, so you don't go driving your car down to Tijuana to sell it for vicadin.

Amazon did it, why not Acme?

So let's say that Acme's normal rates are $40/day, including a $5/day insurance fee that they require you to purchase. Now with the GPS they can see where you're going. If you drive through a bad neighborhood, they know it. If youpark it in a seedy part of town for 5 hours, they know it. If they see that you spend more time on the freeway than on city streets, they know it. If they see that you speed more often than not, they know it.

You drop the car off at Acme and pay your normal bill. The next time that you stop in to pick up a car the daily rate is $50/day. So you ask the clerk about it and he says that the daily insurance rates have increased. OK, so you take the car. But what you didn't know is that the insurance rates only went up on *you* renting the car because you tend to put the car in situations that are higher-risk than their average renter. Even though you are an excellent driver and take good care of the car and have never had a claim, they charge you more money because they can track you and your behavior. How do you like that idea?

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

Well, why do you object to people knowing where you are? I don't care at all. I know a lot of other people don't care at all.

But some of us do care, and we have a right to not have our position broadcast to every business or government agency that wants to track me. Maybe one day I feel like getting away from work and life for awhile and head off to a state park for the weekend. I don't want someone to be able to track me down.

Maybe I enjoy certain forms of entertainment that are perfectly legal, yet some people find of questionable taste. I might not want my employer to be able to tell that I'm at the strip club because his narrow-minded religious beliefs would have me labelled as a pervert. I might not want anybody to know that I stopped by an adult bookstore on the way home and picked up some sex toys for my wife and I to enjoy because if this information were freely available, who's to say that I won't be getting spammed with emails, snail mail mailings, and phone solicitation from other businesses in the sex-related industry?

Maybe I don't want my insurance company to know that I work in a shady part of town where my car is more likely to be stolen or where I am more likely to be mugged or killed (and therefore increase my rates).

The possibilities for exploitation of a tracking system are limited only by your imagination. And I assure you that if a business can find a way to use tracking technology to make more money off of you than they otherwise would be able to, then they will do it.

It seems to be mainly Americans who bring this subject up, which is quite funny, as Americans are probably the most traced people in the world. The irony.

From all indications it would seem that the Brits actually get top honors as the "most monitored people in the world." I'm not sure how you could honestly make the claim that Americans are the most monitored. What evidence have you to back that up?

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

Keiretsu and Zaibatsu? Isn't Zaibatsu another form of japanese megacorporation?,br>
I always thought that a Zaibatsu was a single large mega-corp while a Keiretsu was a group of large corporations who have allied together against other Keiretsu.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.

BTW, fuck privacy - you don't need it if you ain't guilty.

True, but sometimes the only crime these users are guilty of is voicing an opinion.

(First off, I know that only the seoncd line is your comment, but they both seemed enough out of whack to quote them together.)

Are you crazy!?!??! We are all entitled to privacy. Do you really want people prying into every minute detail of your life? Trying to find out who you associate with? Trying to videotape you having sexual relations with your spouse/significant other? Trying to find out your credit history and the names of the banks and other businesses that you deal with? Privacy is an important way of protecting yourself. Just because someone isn't a criminal doesn't mean that they want to expose themselves to people who are.

Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.