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Big Brother Gets a Brain
Gregus writes "The Village Voice delves into the DARPA's latest plan to track people and vehicle movement in cities, ostensibly for urban warfare, though this would be really handy watching 'suspicious' people in any city. "The goal, according to a recent Pentagon presentation to defense contractors, is to 'track everything that moves.' " The actual DARPA RFP and briefings. I just feel more safe all the time."
Unfortunately, it's Jade Goody's
How orwellian our world is becoming. He must have had a time machine or something. Seriously if you havn't read 1984 you really should. Everything is coming true!!
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
I pretty much guessed as much when the DMV in our state issued everyone new license plates. The primary difference was that the new kind are many times more reflective than the old ones, making them ideal for tracking via camera at lengthy distances.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
It's like Newtonian Physics to them.
They just want to know where we are, and what we're doing at all times, so that they can extrapolate what we will do next, and thus know the future.
I mean, it's not like this raises privacy concerns or anything
Mod Note: Funny, Insightful, Interesting... g'luck, I think it's all just measuring our cycnicism right now : )
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
If Darpa is getting a brain, Does that mean Hussein is getting a heart, and the part of Dorothy is being played by Bush Jr?
(And introducing Ret. Gen. Powell as Toto.)
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Nothing to add, I think I pretty much summed it up in $subject
You mean, like, he hadn't one till now? OMG!! it's terrifying to think what he'll do now, with the brain.
PS: Will there be a Service Pack as well?
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
I'm not too bothered if someone is tracking where I go and where my car goes within a city. I still have the privacy of my own home, which is the only place I really had privacy in the first place, and I have the added benefit of knowing that if my car gets stolen, then someone is tracking it for me. My only worry about this is what happens if the data collected by the government falls into the wrong hands? If someone had enough information about you to know what places you went to on a regular basis, they'd have enough information to know when you're not at home (and therefore the best time to break in and steal things from your house).
I feel the same about the government or my ISP tracking what I do online. If someone know what sites I visit and who I chat to, I'm not really that bothered. If I want to talk PRIVATELY, I'll use an encrypted connection. I don't do anything illegal online (warez, stealing music, etc) so I've nothing to worry about.
Follow me
I e-mailed the on duty editor (which a subscriber has the chance to do before a story goes live) this message:
/ 07/02/04 50247&mode=thread&tid=158&tid=99"
"The current subscriber story may me be a duplicate.
See:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03
hmmmmm. I realize article points out a different story then the original, but the content is the same.
KARMA TAG! You're it.
The USGovt can't even manage the information they receive now. There are reams of information they had about the 9/11 plans that just didn't get invetigated, interrogations that are untranslated years after they happened, untold bytes that are simply stored and unexamined, we should abandon the notion that the government wants these capabilities to protect anyone.
The government wants this information because of a desire for power. Will this be used to scan for threats to the general public or to curtail and monitor the activites of those who threaten governmental power, like dissenting political activists? Look at the history of the abuse of the FBI by almost every executive administration for those answers.
This won't stop until the people pull the plug.
The best way to do is to be.
Oh sure, now that the texas sodomy laws have been struck down by the supreme court you have nothing left to worry about.
Actions like this adds fuel to the fire that will erupt in revolution. Remember, this country was founded by people that became intensely disgusted with the opressions of their own government.
... how much longer?
Chances are very good that they'd be disgusted today with what their foundations for freedom have become. I think the US government is now far worse than the british government was in 1776.
So, the ultimate question is
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
And, suddenly, and lose any threads of safety that I once felt while in this country. Sean: So, Joe... how about New Zealand? Joe: Yeah, sure, let's go. Leave this hell hole. Sean: Word. Frickin' government. Go starting packing the computers and the cluster. Joe: Yeah, yeah. Sean: C'mon, I don't want they're stupid 'Big Brother' to see us.
Look like bad for USA citizens ? I'm not sure avarage joe does care it...
So Echelon works more than 20 years. What about 9/11 ? Nope.
It just another system to eat tax'es...
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
Ashcroft really scares me. Libertarians were all supported Bush in 2000. I wonder what they will do in 04. My guess is they are more unhappy with Bush then Clinton at this point thanks mostly to CHeney and Ashcroft.
http://saveie6.com/
Guy: Hey, I was on holiday all last year, abroad. I didn't file a return because I didn't make any money.
IRS man: No you weren't. You were in San Francisco all year.
Guy: Oh. I didn't know you could find out that kind of thing.
IRS man: We have photos. Look, some of them are quite good.
Guy: Oh yes. Can I have a copy of that one of me selling stolen car radios at the beach?
IRS man: How about that one? Your hair looks really cool in that one.
Guy: Great!
IRS man: We'll add it to your bill...
You could easily use credit card information to track where people are going, or even record the numbers on their money when they go to the bank, and then see where the money goes. It's not that difficult. It baffles me to think that DARPA could actually track everyone... maybe they could prevent those Jerry Springer episodes by calling you in case your wife's at your brother's house!
stuff |
Either that or people that don't like the idea of being followed 24-7 by a computer system, monitored by a random individual that can look up what the hell they want to about you. I work for the government in Britain, and I accept that while I am in the building my movements will be monitored, but when I leave I can do pretty much what I want, without the worry of people watching me, making assumptions based on someone I walked past on the street. At this rate the next stpe will be to accept this as evidence in a case, at which point you have to worry about people being falsely imprisoned due to their system saying "X has followed the same route as Y to every day at precisely 12:30 pm, therefore we have reason to imprison him under the homeland security act" Would it be my fault that I get the same bus to lunch every day as a terrorist??
|| bin Laden trained somewhere between 70 and 100 thousand terrorists ||
s s+Destruction
70 and 100 thousand eh? Be sure to double the thickness of your tinfoil hat.
Oh wait! That's who has the weapons of mass destruction, no wonder we can't find them http://www.google.com/search?btnI&q=Weapons+of+Ma
Problem....they would have had to identify the terrorists first so they knew who to look at. You can't use this to do that.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
I pretty much guessed as much when the DMV in our state issued everyone new license plates. The primary difference was that the new kind are many times more reflective than the old ones, making them ideal for tracking via camera at lengthy distances.
It couldn't be that a more reflective license plate makes your vehicle more visible, and thus less likely to be hit, could it?
That's why I voluntarily chose a highly reflective plate, when it became available.
If 'they' were really interested in tracking the "suspicious people" 'they' just have to hang out in front of "The Village Voice" and WBAI offices in NYC :-)
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Ok, I didn't feel like copy and pasting the link from the above comment everytime I wanted to go to the site so I translated it.
... the only difference is one points to the FAQ instead of the main site.
The above post refers to this site.
Both articles point to the official DARPA CTS site
Unique signatures are rare.
If you haven't done anything you've got nothing to hide.
I still don't like the idea though.
--
Jesus Tapdancing Christ. Don't you feel that there are people way too close to the levers of power who would be happy if every citizen reported to their local Patriotic Office every day to prove that they were not a terrorist (powder residue tests, full cavity search, lie-detectopr test)?
I'm praying for a rip in the fabric of spacetime that lets the Founding Fathers through. They would be bitch slapping these bastards so hard....
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Slashdot says, "Real insight is double-plus ungood," so they keep modding up the exact same uninsightful and incorrect 1984 comment every single time it is made.
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
Frankly, I don't mind -proposals- and -concepts- like this, if they can be executed properly.
Yeah, I'd like to meet Bob at the server farm, and Bill behind the data feeds, but hey, that's not realistic. I can't remember who said it, but those who do nothing wrong have nothing to fear really. Now sure, if they hit my house with cameras, I might have some qualms, but being out on sidewalks, things like that, it's not too bad if somebody knows that I just got my arse mugged and hunts the perp down using a network of cameras.
Just imagine, something like this could end the high speed police chase once and for all. Just let your perp go right on home, the cameras follow him home. All you need to do is go up there after he parks, "hi, you're under arrest", read the rights, and no death, mayhem, or destruction associated with a chase.
Another thing I heard recently was that maybe, just maybe, the government is actually there to protect and serve. Sure, I would probably run screaming from the USA if they put a Bush behind the controls of a system like this, but they aren't.
I just think it'd be neat if they could actually get this system to work. Just imagine - being able to walk the streets wherever you are without fear of getting mugged, raped, murdered (you might not want to live there if that's a common fear), or anything. It'd be incredible. A system like this is a fine balance between privacy concerns and legality.
So you ask, what happens if the system sees you go from your house to the porno shop? Big deal in my opinion. If somebody leaks the information and you're running for office, big deal - we all have hormones, you know.
So I say let them show what they can, and if they can help out our police force in enforcing laws (yes, they're there, folks), that'd be awesome. I just don't want to see these cameras report DMCA infractions, but I want to see them report muggings, murders, you know, the usual gamut of things one person does to the other on a sidewalk or street. Although it makes me wonder...would a system like this put the guys behind COMAND and OnStar out of business?
The goal, according to a recent Pentagon presentation to defense contractors, is to 'track everything that moves.
You know those squirrels, they're dangerous. I mean, we've all seen the Clusters and Geico commercials. They must be terrorists!
I predict that this network will become self-aware.
And this new being will be perverted voyeur and never get anything useful done.
It amazes me how people get so worked up over DARPA projects. It's not like anything will come of it. Large cities already use similar technologies to monitor traffic flow. DARPA funds lots of Orwellian-sounding projects. Remember the internet? A DARPA project to build a communications network in case the Russians took out our infrastructure.
And just because DARPA wants to investigate the possibilities doesn't mean anything will come of it. They were (and might still be) real big into projects that studied different ways to implement TIA. Yet, we just read that TIA will effectively be killed in the latest appropriations bill. So, it's not time to panic. When it's time to panic, I'll let you know.
But, on a side note, one great thing about technology is that sometimes it gets misused with unintended benefits. Indiana went from metal-stamped license plates to new plastic ones with screen-printed numbers (Just because we can (R)), and now the traffic cameras can't read the plates due to the glare. That's rich justice for ya.
No person out in the real world could be this naive. bin Laden trained somewhere between 70 and 100 thousand terrorists. It would be stupid in the extreme to believe that none of those guys (and girls?) are right here in the US.
either this guy works for the Bush Administration, or has been severly brainwashed...
they are infiltrating powerplants as much as there are Weapons of Mass destruction in Iraq. SOrry to say, but the Department of Defense has the American public wrapped around its Fear Finger.
We're like rats, in some experiment! -- George Costanza
While you may not be in college or high school, its views like yours that let democracy fall. So Bin Laden trained a few hundred terrorists (because of our egotistical superiority over the middle east, but thats a whole 'nother topic)... does that give the United States any right to "suspect everybody"??? ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!
The reason that people live in this great country is because people have the freedom to do what they feel is necessary to protect their rights. If someone wants to "steal gas trucks and ram them into office buildings," certainly the government should take steps to stop them from doing so, but not at the expense of giving up our personal freedoms such as the right to privacy.
Sure, its a scary world, and the possibilities are definitely endless for terrorists who want to blow shit up. But being so gripped by fear to give up your freedom to live your life is the most idiotic way to live I've ever heard. There are millions of people around the world living under that kinda of facist/militaristic rule, and I'd be willing to bet that any one of them would LOVE to trade places with you, with the ability to use the internet to look up information they never knew existed before, to drive around in a car wherever they want, and if they desire, to rise up against an evil government and overthrow them!
1984 was cool because everyone got thin and flat, big screen tvs in the apartments - for free!
Sure, the downside was that you were monitored, but the units were shiny!
The Big Brother type stuff has always been a dualism for me - part of me thinks it cool to be able to track XYZ and watch the stats of it all, but then there is the part of me that doesn't really personally want to be watched so much.
Of all of the Big Brother type things, my favorite of all time was the AT&T Labs thing where there were units installed into the ceiling tiles that would monitor locations of id trasnmitters that were in id cards, worn by employees.
It would allow someone to finger a user and see what room in a building he/she is in. Or a room could be fingered and then you could see a list of users that are in that room.
That is cool as hell - you could set it up to have a GUI with the building blueprints, and you could setup stats. Show that Joe User spends 5 hours everyday at his desk, and 3 hours at the watercooler.
Cool in the sense that I like it and I'm a stats junkie, but in reality, I'm not so sure I want someone to be able to track that I spend N minutes of the day in the toilet, and then the rest curled up in a ball under my desk, crying. Although I'm pretty certain the resolution on these things isn't good enough to determine the difference between sitting at my desk or sleeping under my desk.
Also, it is an id badge that one wears - one could easily leave it anywhere and bypass the system. That is why we must all get them implanted immediately. Did I just say that?
I am pretty sure this is it here, the Active Badge (the same people that brought us VNC, antoher incredibly cool tool).
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Yeah, that's my "if" and "properly executed" part of my comment...
We can't have systems like this working properly in conjunction with stuff like PATRIOT and the Homeland Security Act. Terrorism is really quite ridiculous - just crack down on everything, folks, and stop doing things in the name of terrorism. The fact of the matter is that we don't have enough security - period.
And remember, this computer system if they can pull it off, would be cheaper than having Jim Bob watching you from a series of computer monitors. Woohoo, more money for edjumacation!
Britain has shown that this system gets alot of bad people off the streets and prevents crime.
All this PARANOIA makes no sense. We want security. Big Brother sounds good to me. I don't want to be robbed and killed by some inner city negroes and don't want to die from from some extremist groups.
If you are a programmer working for DARPA on this project.. don't be afraid of the little red dots glowing around your workstation at night.
Let the party begin!
This project already exists!
http://www.anythingthatmoves.com/
...how would the system react (even one with a 'brain') to people who participated in the Ministry of Silly Walks?
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
Commander: Sweet mother! IFF signal!?
Operator: Unknown, sir!
Commander: Damn it! Any units ready!?
Operator: Negative, fifth armour is stuck in a traffic jam at Main street!
Commander: Damn it all to hell! Get me NORAD on the line, someone inform the president!
Operator: Visual confirmation coming in by TrackSat2 Delta... NORAD will be notified, unable to notify the president sir!
Commander: Explain yourself!
Operator: The president is driving that segway, sir!
Commander: By all that's unholy...
Hate me!
Yeah, but can they see me with my foil hat on?
Linux: Helping nerds look smarter since the late 90s.
Too bad for them, though, that keeping tabs on my position will cause them to lose track of my velocity...
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
Question: There are Kenyans seeking compensation from the US for the injuries incurred during terrorist ... I can see asking for aid but suing the US government for those attacks
attacks, by al-queda, in Kenya. I'm not exactly sure how they came to the conclusion that the US is
responsible for their injuries
seems out of line - injuries not withstanding. The suit was thrown out of court, here.
Quote:
The chairman of the Kenyan bomb victims association, Douglas Sidialo, who was
blinded by the bomb blast, told BBC News Online that the victims are not surprised
by the decision. "The blow was expected considering the negative attitude of the
US Government, the US Senate and the US Congress towards the whole question
of compensation," said Mr Sidialo. "They have been very indifferent to the suffering
of the Kenyan victims".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3067361.stm
If I piss someone off and they go off and injure a third party while trying to injure me,
am I responsible to the third party?
In light of current events, would "wrong hands" include government officials that twist intelligence data to further political aims?
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
byebye karma!! haha TSAU lamers
Welcome to Operation Mindcrime.
go to any conveince store and by observation I can tell you where each vehice came from work or home, theri famliy member composition, living conditions , and etc..
It did not cost me tens of millions of dollars either!
Don't Tread on OpenSource
In the true penny-arcade style, I propose the following:
We gather a large group in a major urban center. Taking our cars, we drive en masse along a pre-planned route that, to the pattern-matching machine, will appear as a giant wang on the map.
This wang will be awe-inspiring, perhaps enough-so to cause the AI in the machine to become envious, thereby destroying it.
President: What's that on the map? Some sort of terrorist cell!?
CIA guy: Ummm....
President: I want answers!
CIA guy: Well... It appears... to be a... wang, sir.
President: Wang, eh? That some sort of dirty bomb?...
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
I wonder if DARPA makes a model for my room, or for my house. A consumer model would always be able to tell me where I left my car keys, or where I lost my bookbag. Or where my mind ran off to...
'those who do nothing wrong have nothing to fear'
This has never been true.
Did the german Jews have nothing to fear when they were told to register with the government?
Or are you saying your government never makes mistakes, or does bad things?
It would be fun to mess with it. :)
Drive back and forth on the same route, try to guess which patterns would trigger it. Like those numberplate reading traffic monitors. those could be fun to "play" with like mounting the rear plate from the car in the front of another. Just to see if they have prepared for the odd readings or will it say "average traveltime to center -3.4 min"
my sig
..they don't call it "Skynet", because the shit will hit the fan after that.
I'm not too bothered if someone is tracking where I go and where my car goes within a city.
Ok, please post a log of absolutely *everywhere* you or your car goes for the next month. Include pictures.
While there may be no right to privacy, the thought of a government tracking every citizen is a bit too scary for me.
And this concept applies (in most cases, and ideally) to US government.
Yeah, sure, the government has at least one or two MAJOR brainfarts on a daily basis. This might be one of them. What I was explaining though was that I can see the light side to this, unlike the DMCA and PATRIOT acts. I live in Miami, it'd be nice to be able to walk around without worrying about thugs and random idiots.
That's all. I just want to see our streets and pedestrians safe again. It'd be heartwarming. On the other hand, I could end up on a first-name basis with the folks in Kevlar down here, too. Eh, oh well.
all i can say is your a wanker. seriously. do you realise how much this would hurt your country. all trade with theus would cease. all tourist dollars would be gone. do u know how many jobs you would cost. let alone your rascist comments. btw the US is not the big benefactor that you think. the US gives one of the smallest amounts per GDP for any developed country. the EU provides much more.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
That means DARPA employees, NSA, CIA, FBI, police, Congressmen, Senators, the Executive, Fortunate Sons of Blue Chip dynasties, [RI|MP]AA execs, Enron/Worldcomm/Haliburton CEOs, high class hookers, roofied teenage pop star wannabes, assorted Princes and diplomats from oppressive oil rich dictatorships, coke dealers, transexual Thai ladyboy dominatrices and all, right?
I ask this because it'll be very interesting to see if Freedom of Information extends to letting We, the People find out the locations of those people, and specifically, interesting intersections of them in space-time.
I'm betting not in practice ("National Security" == "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH"), but it'd be nice to assert it in principle about now to hopefully give Them a chance to pause for thought.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Somehow, I get the feeling that living on the dark side of the moon or one of those ice covered places might be a good idea for the future
Maybe you should hang yourself. Life is obviously too complex for you.
"Whaaaa, I'm a wanker" is what I'm reading between the lines in your post.
Fact: H1Bs and hi-tech job exports are already killing the US economy.
Fact: The corrupt politicians aren't doing shite to stop it.
Fact: The towelheads are coming over here and taking OUR jobs from US citizens
Fact: Companies that sponsor H1Bs are abusing the system, pulling in too many people & keeping them here too long - to the detriment of our workforce.
Fact: All the countries that bitch and moan about the US military being on their soil would greatly suffer if we pulled all of them home. The city I live in lost an Air Force base a few years ago, & it pushed the local economy down.
Fact: The US bailed your country out in every world war there's ever been. You brtis should be kissing our arse. What? You're Austrailian? Sorry, decendants of convicts aren't real people.
Fact: I'm not racist, I hate everyone.
Fact: You fsck sheep, you fscking wanker!!
Even if they get the infrastructure set up, how do they implement this in our legal system? I figure that the images they have will be grainy, black and white, and of blurry, moving cars at night. I don't see how you can hand that to a jury and say, "Well, even though you can't see anything here, our program is nearly 87% certain that this car is in fact the car of the defendant." Is 13% reasonable doubt? Is 12%? We know that .5% isn't, or cases involving DNA evidence would be thrown out. At what point does jury duty become the analysis of quantatative figures as opposed to qualitative arguments?
To some extent I feel like a logical justice system is a step forward for society. At the same time, I'd prefer a trial by my peers, were I ever faced with the choice. Some day a jury deliberation may be number crunching:
"Well, the computer on 4th and Broad Street has determined with 75 percent probability that the defendant was moving towards the scene of the crime, and the computer on 5th and Broad Street gives us a 80 percent probability that he stopped at the scene. That gives us a 95% degree of probability that he was at the scene at the time of the murder. According to the Numerical Methods Act of 2015, we have to convict him."
while (!sleep){
sheep++;
}
Nice!!!!
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
We've seen it a few years ago. This idea of doing everything, tracking everything, of perfect harmonious integration sounds like ever BS marketing plan we heard during the dot-com-to-bomb era.
Government is usually behind the curve. Sounds like they caught up with the enthusiasm of years past. I expect the future for their rosy plans will be much the same - massive reality cramps.
Of course they'll have the money to keep trying (our money), which is one big difference.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Now, just for clarity's sake, remind me again just who is it that gets to define what "anything" is?
The primary fear behind any intrusion by government into it's citizen's lives is based upon the concept of "slippery slope". In other words, "since we're already tracking this guy's e-mail, what's wrong with tracking his physical location?", or "what's wrong with filming his daily activities (both public and private)?". Government will argue that this will help identify and track "suspicious" individuals and potential "terrorists", but again, who gets to define those terms? You, me, the political party of the moment?
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
right here bill on slashdot I beleave anything he says. I Trust him with my passwords and credit card information always! I wish HTML code had a sarcasim tag......
How come this post makes so much sense? How come so many people would freak out if we tried to do this? Instead of tracking everyone, just eliminate the need to track people.
Run for the hills! it^^^^^. . . . This material has been censored by SkyNet. A local Terminator should be at your house shortly. Have a nice day.
On one hand, our government wants to track all movement.
.
On the other, they're terrified of a dissertation that uses simple data mining to reveal infrastructure weakness.
So . . . they're going to build a massive system, rely on it, and thus give people a nice jucy target to screw up. Knowing the government, it won't work anyway, or if it somehow works it'll be misused, making it only more laughable.
Besides, imagine what happens when someone Bluescreens national security . .
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
This stuff all already exists in various components. It is just being pieced together a little differently. It is another tool developed from existing components. Like most tools it can be used for good or evil. Even a hammer can be used for evil but nobody would consider outlawing hammers.
Like most people, I value my privacy. Matter of fact, I place a high value on my privacy. But when I am in public, I behave like I am in public. By doing so, when I am out and about I attract very little attention and I remain more private than if I were to draw attention to myself.
I can see this tool being used for good, to catch criminals, to determine where stashes of drugs are hidden and so on. But just as importantly, I can see how it can invade privacy of innocent people.
Hopefully it will never be used for anything outside of the battlefield. If it is hopefully the courts will see it as an invasion of privacy and require law enforcement to have a warrant to employ it and place significant restrictions on the data it gathers! By that I mean the courts should require all data gathered that does not lead to criminal prosicution to be destroyed.
I can see how this tool can be used for good but I can also see it's evil nature. Let's make sure it is very tame before we let ot out of the coral. If we don't we as a society will be living under the thumb of as society no better than the Nazis
"The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time."
Now it really _is_ conceivable...
Of course in the UK we are already Secure Beneath the Watchful Eyes.
EXACTLY.
The back-lash would be unbelievable. But you know what? Who cares?
It's time the US stops trying to protect the world & takes care of itself.
Yes, I know the US is a 'melting pot' but you know what? Stuff gets upgraded/changed all the time. Time to update the US' mentality & start worrying about its own people for a change.
Let the EU take over where we're leaving off, since they're so high and mighty. I can't imagine they'd last more than a few weeks trying to protect and feed the world.
yada yada
If you have not ready 1984 here is where you can download an digital copy.
I highly recommend this book, however if you have a paranoid nature you may not really want to read it.
10: PRINT "Everything old is new again."
20: GOTO 10
The flaw with the parent is that it assumes that whoever comes to power next is different. No. That will never happen. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Political philosophers have been arguing ways to mitigate this human characteristic and have never really solved it yet...
An automobile manufacturer has found that repair claims have a mean of $920.00 and standard deviation $870.00. Suppose that the next 100 claims can be regarded as a random sample. .05, i.e. P =.05.
a) Find the probability that that the mean repair claim of these 100 claims will be more than $1000.00.
b) Find the level L such that the probability that the mean repair claim of these 100 claims will be more than L is only
without my glasses and thought it said "CmdrTaco gets a brain".
Isn't this supposed to just be for foreign cities? I know the argument is "but it could be used in the wrong way", but I don't think the intent here is to use this thing on American cities (of course, unless we actually had urban warfare in an American city).
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
There are any number of innocent people in prison right now that would give anything to be able to prove they were someplace else when the crime they were convicted of was commited. Can anyone who knows about the use of this technology in Britain say whether it has been used to prove someone is innocent?
In one sense, it give the state more power. But in another sense it create equality. Its not their word against yours, but their word against tape. And officers acting out wrongly as individuals would hide less securely behind their authority.
Its important to choose one's paranoias carefully.
We have this already in London - all cars in and out of the congestion charging zone get clocked by cameras and their number plates are fed into a central computer. Women wanting to know if their husbands made it into work today - or skipped off to play golf/see the mistress can call up and check if a plate has been in the zone. It wouldn't take too much effort to extend this out and use other vehicle characteristics rather than just number plates to track vehicles continuously.
Our local government is extremely inefficient. The DMV website of my home state (Virginia) is hailed as one of the best, yet it is nothing more than a frontpage index. We have an Online Transactions page which is supposed to keep you from waiting in the dreaded DMV line, but when you fill some of the forms you are greeted with an error message. It has been so for the past six months or so. I have filed numerous complaints, written letters to the DMV webmasters, filled a complaint form at my local library, and signed their contact form online, nothing changed.
It takes a week to verify a driver's insurance status, AFTER the reception of all the documents. These are not documents handed out from the driver him/herself, but are faxed/mailed by insurance agencies to the DMV!
Why on earth would the processing of an electronic document take a week? The DMV should design the format for its electronic forms, and have the insurance agencies use thos document forms/templates, and the DMV should invest in a tiny document processing software tool OCR or text,whatever, and be done with this dreaded 7 day queue. It doesn't even have to be a document, the question is "Does this driver have insurace, yes or no?" It is nothing more than a boolean flag, and I am waiting for seven days, so my local government can understand the meaning of Yes or No. If they don't have the resourced to implement this, then they should by all means open up the specs, and someone will implement it with the tools they already own, free of charge, and I am volunteering for this.
Most of the automated telephone help line for all the universities, courts, and government agencies (which I have used)are turned off AFTER business hours. I am wondering, why would an answering machine need to work only from 9 to 5, during business days? Do they pay the machine in overtime? You can not even get the directions or pay your dues with a credit card after business hours. The only exception to this is Fairfax County which handed out their tax-payment processing department to a privately operated hotline.
Our government is a well oiled machine when it comes to executing its boy projects (Global wars, high-tech survailance, duct-tape shilling, etc.) remember how fast the tax cut was approved and executed? but when it comes to the issues that matter to us citizens, it starts to develop arthiritic joints.
that constantly move, to throw off the government.
It's hard to measure Quality of Life, but before assuming that Americans are really well off consider the findings of the UN's Human Development Report. In particular look at how many Americans live below the median income (compared with other "developed" nations), or people living under (the equivalent of) $11US per day
One could go on about life expectancy, infant mortality, and other such "quality of life" stats... But you've got the relevant link and can look up these topics to your heart's content.
I think they should donate the barin to President Bush, he can REALLY use one.
Reality has a notoriously liberal bias -- Stephen Colbert
the US gives one of the smallest amounts per GDP for any developed country. the EU provides much more.
You wish, fucker. The US may give one of the smallest PERCENTS of GDP, but we also give the MOST in REAL DOLLARS. Which would you rather have, 90% of 10 dollars or 2% of 20,000,000 dollars? Dipshit. Oh, that's 20.000.000 for you fucking wankers in europe.
Just because the U.S. is the greatest country in the world doesn't mean we're superior...oh wait, yes it does.
The Institute for Applied Autonomy has a nice tool to plan paths through Manhattan that will take you past the fewest cameras. I imagine these kinds of tools will spring up in other areas
Or you can get ahead of them like I have. Get a tracking cell phone while it is still optional
Free cell phone tracking
So when they require/try this in the U.S. it will be an admission that they are at war with the public? That's a very interesting attitude.
>> I pretty much guessed as much...
Guessed what? That DARPA was going to request proposals to track movement in urban warfare environments?
Those shiny license plates must really be something.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Well folks, better get your guns while we still have that right. Soon they will be locking up US Citizens for statements like this.
Thank you GW bush.
The second Bush, the second Hitler.
I live in a condo that's located in an "urban" environment and I wish cops had access to something like this already. We had at least 6 Nissan Maximas broken into and xenon headlights taken out. While the police cannot prevent something like this, at least they would be able to trace their movement throughout the city. At least 3 times they were the same people and even used the same car. I am sure they did a few passes through the complex and neighborhood development before they actually began their "work". If cops had access to this, they could have eyewitnesses ID the car and have an alarm pop up on their monitor when the samecar entered the city. I don't know about you, but I would sleep better.
At least the debt is self-inflicted. Taxes aren't.
The Party in 1984 used "War Without End" as the means by which GDP could be turned into scrap metal.
Our leaders have chosen "Bureaucracy Without End" instead. Half of GDP is now consumed by government, and the percentage rises, regardless of which party is in power. Yes, the Military gets a slice of it, but that slice is dwarfed by Medicare, AFDC, SS, SDI, transfers to state and local governments, midnight basketball, putting flowers on the median strips on the highways, picking up litter in the desert, and $80,000 grants to measure the size of squirrels' nuts. All of these things - from the largest to the smallest - require forms to be filled out, filed in duplicate, scanned, examined, re-filed, facts verified on separate forms, and buried in soft peat for six months.
You think that doesn't turn GDP into /dev/null just as effectively as permanent global war?
Given the alternatives for wealth destruction readily open to them, I'd say our leaders are the very model of grandmotherly kindness.
But all of this talk of "destroying wealth to keep the proles in line" is beside the point. It's one of many means our leaders are employing to achieve a (IMO desirable) end. The original poster wasn't interested in the means, he was interested in the ends. When you grok - in its fullness - the reason that "converting" Winston Smith was not an "option" (to be chosen over simply killing him), but a requirement - only then, will you understand the end - an end that doesn't merely justify the means, it requires them.
People in America are too full of themselves, I would know I've lived here all my life. The thing is the people who think big brother is always watching either A: have something to hide B: aren't the ones being watched. Big brother doesn't give a fat rats you know what about what Joe Nobody does or where he goes on a regular basis. Why would they, you have no value. You are not special, you are not a rare and beautiful flower. Your life is boring and little can be obtained from studying it.
This unfounded, unsubstantiated assertion gets modded as "Insightful"??
Geez, if Slashdot thinks that's insightful, maybe I'll post stories about airplanes and then tell everyone that "Wow...it's just like da Vinci and Jules Verne said it would be....!!"
In any case, this isn't the first time Slashdot has tossed this this DARPA RFP story to its core audience of adolescent male fantasizers. Must sure boost the ad impressions, though.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Does target sell clothes?
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
This just *wondefull*, that's why Bin Laden/Hussein are captured and dead. Get a clue, this is to monitor you morons...
I wouldn't be so sure that it doesn't work technically. There is a congestion charge for an area in Central London, people who enter an 8-square-mile area during working hours have to pay (see e.g. IHT article on that subject). The number plates are read automatically, only when someone doesn't pay, the pictures are viewed by a human being before a fine is imposed. The system relies on automatic reading of number plates, as do other systems for tracking car drivers illegally using bus lanes or speeding.
Of course, all these systems only control a very limited area, building a system that controls "everything that moves" in a large area would be very expensive at the moment, but, judging from existing experience, it seems to be feasible technically, and it can well be that it becomes much cheaper in the future.
Another question is, of course, how millions of information items of the kind 'X drove from A to B at 12:34' could be interpreted. If it is to get payment from X, it's clear what the aim is (which of course doesn't mean that the data could be used for something else, as well), but that's not the aim of DARPA. I think we shouldn't rely too much on such systems not being feasable technically, but think about possible abuse in time, before they are in place.
Anonymity is no longer a guarantee. "Hmmm....Mr. Smith voted against me (public official) last election. Why should we release this evidence that shows his son is clearly not at fault for (insert accident/crime scenario)."
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
We are always quick to point out that just because something CAN be used to do something illegal, it should not be illegal itslef. DeCSS, modchips, software cracks, file sharing, you know what I mean.
Well.. are we not then two faced if we sit here and complain that the government is developing something that could be used to track people in cities? We all know what happens when you block technology, right? It goes underground.
If your government wants to spy on you, you need to make sure that spying is clearly illegal, so those involved can be prosecuted... not try to keep technology out of their hands.
We are already tracked five ways to friday, DARPA would simply add a visual image to the infrequent portions of our day where we aren't already tracked (and often already visually recorded). My location can be tracked through work schedules, the archaic phonebook, and credit-card/debit purchases. My purchases are tracked through store "discount" cards and my credit cards to create a profile of my spending habits for market research. If my wife/boss bothers to do so, they can track my internet usage, and the NSA could get it's hands on my internet tracks unless i go to what i consider extreme lengths to cover them. I am on film whenever I walk into a commercial establishment and on the sidewalks in between via atm's etc. Unless I want to ride a bike, shave myself bald, wrap myself in 100% cotton (no dye, less traceable) bedsheets, and pay for my purchases in less-traceable-than-paper-or-credit gold, I am not going to have anonymity. We lost that years ago. McCarthy just started formalizing the process a few years back, and now we have the technology to back it up. Time and time again, a signficant portion of our society displays their inability to manage their own lives. Maybe they need someone to step in and track them so that we can help them learn to function/weed them out.
Well, as far as Sig's go, Freud was a doozy.
Actually, the real problems are all three: government corruption, the undermining of democracy, and unjust laws. When you think of an effective solution that doesn't envolve getting a lot of people killed, let us know. In the meantime, we'll fight the obvious stuff. Imagine how hard it will be fighting corruption and restoring democracy when you have no privacy.
-Hope
As a male with younger brothers, I find myself offended by the title of this article!
Hey, I'm white! It's a race thing, isn't it?
I also notice that it's specific to males, you sexist pig!
I don't have a big brother, you insensitive clod!
At what point does it become opression, instead of self defense?
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
I suppose at least a few people here must read books on the "Man-Kzin wars." Several of these mention future human civilizations, and in particular the last on which I read (XI or IX, can't remember) has a detective story which mentioned the use of such tracking, and also how it is likely to be used in the future.
Any usage of a non-cash currency, such as a Credit Card or Debit is automatically logged and visible to the criminal DB. Transportation has moved the way of mostly quick mass-transit, with a transport pod requiring a fingerprint or handprint to access.
Most doors, ports, etc have retinal or hand/finger identification in order to acquire entry (although personal doors may have a mechanical lock).
When you think about it... some of these technologies are of the type that people would say "cool" and begin using. Geeks would drool over neat biometric recognition, but it could also be used to track them.
In the future, I think the simple advancement of "convenience" technology will also be which makes it easy to track humans. Unfortunately, unless the Niven books, the authorities are aren't exactly straight and unbiased in America, and this warrants for abuse.
So, next time you move to embrace a "cool" new technology, perhaps we should think about the possible abuses hidden beneath the glitter and sparkle.
(singing to the tune of "Sounds of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkel) .....
Hello DARPA My Old Friend, I've come to hide from you again.....Because you are seeking, of where I am off to Sneaking
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I think we should all give so much information to the government that they won't know what to do with it. If they want info about me, I'll give them everything, call every government office with tips and info on what I did every second of the day, what color socks I was wearing etc. Eventually they'll splode! cool.
"In Soviet Russia, television watches you!"
-uso.
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
It appears that half of Americans live below the median income!
That's the same as in Cuba, or Rwanda!
Nah, not naive, however I figured I'd venture on the bright side of things for a moment before returning to my dimly-lit abyss of pessimism.
Don't you just love the smell of napalm in the morning? Good stuff!
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
The reason that people live in this great country is because people have the freedom to do what they feel is necessary to protect their rights. If someone wants to "steal gas trucks and ram them into office buildings," certainly the government should take steps to stop them from doing so, but not at the expense of giving up our personal freedoms such as the right to privacy.
People live in the US because they are born there. Very few are allowed to move there and become citizens anymore. Also, the only people I ever hear calling the US great are Americans.
I'd be willing to bet that any one of them would LOVE to trade places with you, with the ability to use the internet to look up information they never knew existed before, to drive around in a car wherever they want, and if they desire, to rise up against an evil government and overthrow them!
In the US there are many people that feel their government is becoming evil and oppressive. Are they allowed to surf the Internet and rise up to destroy that government, as you say? Is Timothy McVeigh alive???
Anyway, driving your car around is hardly freedom.
He didn't have any 'tricks' up his sleeve, he just was aware of human nature and history.
The majority of people are sheep, and are controllable. ( some would argue they NEED to be controlled )
The majority of governments are bent on taking exploiting that controllability.
Things such as this, are just part of the process of expanding that control.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
that Conservatives stood for smaller government... surely creating equipment to monitor each street in the country (because it seems to me it'd be a lot easier to install cameras, or use existing ones in our own cities rather than it would be to send technicians out to a war zone and start installing cameras while people are shooting at you!) is the opposite of that.
As a matter of fact, the first time you do something "erratic" or "suspicious" to the computer system and it sends a police car to follow you around and/or arrest or harrass you, you will be so glad we live in a free country that is just protecting us from terrorists.
I'm in my late 20's so I still get harrassed often by police because young men often look suspicious to police because of our age and when we do suspicious things such as drive around or walk. Just last week I was followed around my apartment complex all the way to my house because I looked suspicious... I was going to ask the officer what the problem was but unfortunately there is no way to question my local police...
Once I tried talking to one as he was about to follow me into my gated apartment complex (a separate incident) after he unsuccessfully tried to guess a gate code for a few minutes rather than using the emergency code (because he really just wanted to drive around and harrass people and had no reason to be there). I told him, very politely, actually, because a friend of mine who is a policeman in Ft. Lauderdale that was visiting me was in the car with me, "Sir, please use your gate code". He then almost broke down the gate with the car that my taxes in part paid for and screamed (at the top of his lungs and in a very inappropriately rude and loud response to a very calm statement on my part (I have a witness)) "Boy, move your car or I'm gonna arrest you and kick your A**". After being threatened by the cop, my Policeman buddy explained to me that, though the cop was being a prick, was absolutely wrong, was trying to break into my neighborhood (there is an emergency gate code for official police business he did not use and the fact that he was trying for about five minutes to guess a resident gate code so it wouldn't be on the record that he used the emergency code for no emergency), and threatened to beat the crap out of me, I better let him in because I should show him some respect.
After this incident, I am afraid to speak to police because, in their line of work my friend told me, they are suspicious of everyone for their own safety. That's fine, and I think wise, but there is a serious difference between being overly cautious and suspicious and beind downright disrespectful, threatening, and harassing young people and minorities because we all "look suspicious". Perhaps I should spray paint my hair grey so I don't "look suspicious" anymore.
I know my experiences with police have been extremely mild in comparison with other people's experiences, fortunately for me, I never was up to no good when encountering police. Well, this is certainly an off-topic rant, but it goes to show how enthusiastic I am to be visually followed around a city, marked as "suspicious" because I'm young, then pinpointed for harrassment by the police.
Surely there are more respectful ways to treat americans!
-Joe
If we're all god's children, what's so special about Jesus? - Jimmy Carr
Put RFID in driver's licenses and car tags then place sensors in street lights and street signs. Anybody without one or the other is then labeled a potential terrorist, taken in for questioning, and had an RFID tag implanted rectally..
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/02/ 0450247&mode=thread&tid=158&tid=99
-Styopa
I've devised an ingenious plan to stop "they" from watching our every move!
The cunningly crafted counter to their crafty capture of copious quantities of carefully qualified camera footage, closing this calous calamity in one courageous act is simple...
I'll hack the gibson!!
I was all geared up for a human cloning story there, only to find out it's about something boring like civil rights! Boo!
Way back in the 1980s I used to do a lot of travel between England and Ireland. As an American citizen liveing in Ireland, I carried a passport issued by the US Consulate in Dublin.
I swear, every time I was stopped at Heathrow, they'd pull out the book of wanted IRA men and compare my picture to every damned one. Thank you, NORAID.
More recently, passing through Gatwick, I had my picture taken and compared programatically to a list of wanted faces. The camera was right out there in front of me. I've yet to experience the same in the U.S.
I guess the point is that the US may be going to hell, but it's doing so more slowly than everywhere else.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
As I understand it, Arafat's plan is to drive all the Jews into the sea, and shoot the ones that don't drown.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Look: if you're not a dangerous criminal, the government DOESN'T CARE what you do. Really.
I submit the following 'danergous criminals'
John Lennon
Albert Einstein
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Elvis Prestley
Frank Sinatra
Marilyn Monroe
Mickey Mantle
Lenny Bruce
Charlie Chaplin
Each one a dangerous criminal and worthy of the governments watchful eye.
WAKE UP!
Do a Google search! You'd be surprised at the information that turns up!
Does this remind anybody else about this?
In the movie, an "intelligent" computer in the United States is put in charge of our nukes and, together with a Soviet version, ends up controlling all aspects of our lives.
I saw it when I was 10 or so and it made quite an impression on me.
They're already starting to track vehicle identity in Australia to give out speeding tickets.
Camera network set to catch Hume speedsters
The main paragraphs since no one on slashdot reads the articles are:
Ten cameras to be installed along the Hume Freeway soon will measure the average speed of cars over the entire 300-kilometre journey between Melbourne's northern fringe and Wodonga.
Drivers whose overall progress is faster than the speed limit allows will be fined. Drivers will also be caught if they are speeding as they pass a camera.
The company said yesterday the cameras combined digital imaging and optical character recognition to read vehicle number plates. The cameras would be networked and synchronised.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
It's all about getting richer and richer. Morality is just one of the smoke screens they hide behind, and a behavior control tool.
Don't be so quick to point the finger at conservatives. (Never mind for now that such categories are too simplistic.) Leftists are just are eager to control our thinking. People with deeply held convictions are told they must accept homosexuality (sodomy), abortion (child murder), and adult entertainment (pornography and prostitution) as a normal part of society (and even sacrosanct civil rights!) - or else be branded as "intolerant" or "close-minded", or even face prosecution for "hate crime"! Thought crime is more like it.
Cultural norms that are held for hundreds of years don't become norms by accident, nor are they so drastically changed in a generation. Have you ever stopped to think why these norms exist? Why they are held with such conviction? You can pooh-pooh religion all you want, but you're in a distinct minority. For over 95% of the inhabitants of this planet, spiritual matters are a factor in life. For most of them this means some form of organized religion. Most organized religions traditionally reject homosexuality and the others. (And for good reasons, but that's another discussion.) And for a majority of those people these beliefs are a foundational part of their being. And yet, the irreligious 5% seeks to impose it's own interpretation of morals on society - a society it doesn't relate to on the most basic of levels.
For those that don't think you can legislate morality, wake up, it happens all the time. Statute law is codified morality. It's our ideas of right and wrong written down and given the weight of society to enforce. When basic ideas of what constitutes justice are treated as merely whims of convenience that can be changed for trifling reasons, you'd better expect society as you know it to implode. People's convictions don't change simply because you change a law, and when the two are not aligned you're going to see friction.
Constitutionally Correct
There already is one. It's called Jordan. Check it out...I don't remember the name of the 1922 treaty off hand, but the entire Israel+Jordan area was meant as the Jewish homeland. A year later they reconsidered and remade over 2/3 of it an Arab state. So if there is any truth whatsoever to the claim that "Palestinians" are a distinct people group, there is already a place for them. Every other country in the world accepts refugees. The only reason the Arab countries don't integrate the "Palestinians" is they have a political agenda to destroy - not coexist with - Israel.
Who are you to decide the social policy of another country? Nations always work best, and history bears this out, when the people comprising it are relatively homogeneous. Why do you think we have the term "Balkanize"? Any attempts at lumping together different people groups by pretending differences don't exist will inevitably fly apart. Witness former USSR, former Yugoslavia, former Czechoslovakia. Teddy Roosevelt (I believe) warned against hyphenated Americanism for this very reason. It's not merely "political" - it's social, cultural, and religious.
Constitutionally Correct
DARPA is also funding a research project that eventually hopes to create software that is self-aware. I believe this was posted previously on /.
article here
This might also tie into the Genoa II and Sensit projects. There are many projects with similar aims funded by darpa.
TallGreen CMS hosting
Note the point of that exchange between Winston and O'Brian.
To me it's not about hope at all - or rather, the lack of hope is just an excuse for what really happens. Winston, in his desire to rebel against Big Brother eagerly accepts an alternative master in The Brotherhood.
Did the nomenclature similarity between the choices go unnoticed?
Of course, your point in regards to the topic of this discussion stands as before, though maybe with a slightly even more paranoid twist - if that's possible when talking Orwell.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
... is to legalize all of the things you're paranoid about being discovered doing.
The problem is not Big Brother but what Big Brother says is allowed.
All of which you are doing, forget the house analogies, this is a technical issue with laws applying directly to it.
The fact that they did not secure their wireless hub is not really the same as an invitation to join their network and you would be hard pressed to convince a judge it is. I'm not telling you not to do it, just don't do it under the assumption you will be free from prosection.
I'm glad you concede at least part of my comment about Nobel Peace Prize-winner Yassir Arafat's plan for mass-murder.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
This may increase the paranoia drip-rate on your IV, but a few years ago I read some articles about a very small infrared camera that could be used to identify a person from the distance of some 3 to 10 feet. The technology used the heat signature of the veins and arteries in your face as a unique signature like a fingerprint. A facial thermal fingerprint.
Now if a person is driving by a sign that has one of these, then they can be identified. Once ID'd, the movements thru a city grid can be done on a vector basis as long as the movement of the object doesn't leave the visibility of the grid, the person can be tracked. Put the same ID units outside office buildings and they can tell that citizen ID (CID) 159320FDSFL1882 has been in the building for 4h 32m... etc. Once re-aquired, the tracking can all be automated and databasized for future query on your behalf to prove you didn't kill OJ....
They were wrong, it's not a Matrix, it's more of a World Wide Mesh of interconnectedness...
I think we had better start moving before they start tracking.
Nope.
The OCR software that came with WinFAX-95 was remarkably accurate and fast, especially given a 486 CPU running at 33 Mhz.
Does your employer know about this?
What ever happened to OCR software in recent years anyway? One minute it was there, and then it wasn't. It's like some sort of conspiracy...
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
I agree totally with that law, and I have never "secure[ed] access to any program or data held in any computer" other than my own and those which people have explicitly given me access.
;-)
Most access points' default behaviour (at least the one I bought, and others I've read about) is to send an invitation (including MAC address and SSID) out every 100th of a second. A computer replying to that invitation isn't accessing a program or data (so authorisation doesn't even come into it). Being assigned an IP address through DHCP after accepting the invitation still isn't accessing programs or data, it's consuming a service, isn't it?
On the funnier side of this, the wording of that act makes it look like any of the things it says are "bad" are perfectly alright for a woman to do. It looks a bit sexist
Follow me
"Every other country in the world accepts refugees"
Not every. And notably not Israel. These people actually lived in what is now Israel until they were kicked out by force. If you ever remember the name of that treaty, go look up the signatories. You'll note the lack of anyone representing the actual inhabitants of the territory being divvied up. Those people, who actually lived there, are considered by Israel to have less right to the land than any Jew, even if that Jew has never been there at all.
"Who are you to decide the social policy of another country?"
Who are you to tell people they should just leave their home, and not complain?
"Nations always work best, and history bears this out, when the people comprising it are relatively homogeneous."
Which is why he suggests a secular, ethnicity blind Israel (which I'd reccomend for all nations), instead of one that views people in distinct classes with radicaly different rights and worth. Territories, through the vagaries of history, contain non-homgenous populations. Nations work best when they allow and encourage those populations to assimilate with one another. One thing history bears out with a vengance: A people who set themselves apart from others will not live in peace with those others. They will be oppressed or oppressor. Israels abitlity to portray themselves as oppressed, not oppressor, against all logic, is truly stupefying. But it's getting thin pretty fast.
I think you are right with that interpretation but its possible that it could also be interpreted that by taking an address on their network that is access enough. Your packets are on their hardware, even if its just arp. They do say ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law so I wonder if that applies to cases like this (ie ignorance to secure their network and stop it "inviting" users who don't know it is unauthorised).
:)
It would really come down to what happened once you'd connected to the network and how much evidence there was of it
I wonder if you could actually use that in court, well the law says a person is guilty if he....
It's the whole did I take it, or did they give me it thing. Round about where I live there are quite a few wireless access points that intentionally give you access, supply an IP address and a default route to the Internet. There's a restaurant somewhere between South Bridge and The Meadows in Edinburgh that does this. Without doing a bit of research online before going war driving/walking, I think it would be rather difficult to tell whether someone actually meant to allow people access, or if they were just being ignorant when it came to security.
Follow me
I agree with you 100%. I just wanted to mention (even though you probably already know this), that the police in the U.S. can't (legally) use an IR camera to watch you through your walls without getting a search warrant first. Mere suspicion doesn't cut it anymore. A 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court decided this on June 11, 2001.
Of course, if you are "suspected of being a terrorist supporting drug user" as you say, then getting a warrant these days is probably not too difficult...
Can't Scan Without a Warrant
somehow I sense on oncoming rush of homebrew development in this field... it's a pity that most of the info has been locked away since 911
.... which is why it's so hard to get fissionable materials....
I remember when research on such things was available to the general public... now all you find is porn sites and crackpots with no scientific background whatsoever... and if you do happen across the rare piece of information... it's often on a site overseas....
anyhow... EMP weaponry is like nuclear weaponry... they are both insanely simple... and the media blows their complexity out of proportion.... for example... assuming you could obtain fissionable material... anyone can build a nuke
EMP... however... can be as simple as destructive magnetic braking of a iron flywheel (with significant mass) moving at a high rate of speed.... if you want more information... try your local university library.... assuming your local government hasn't started the book burning yet....
Does this remind anyone else of the book 1984?? Scary.
Could someone please mirror it? *.mil is inacessible from parts of the world (the DNS servers are firewalled)
Wrong. Israel has been accepting Jews from around the world since 1948. Despite how crowded it's gotten to be, they still accept newcomers who make aliyah.
Wrong again. Mark Twain said in 1867, "Stirring scenes occur in the valley [of Jezreel] no more. There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent - not for 30 miles in either direction. There are two or three small clusters of Bedouin tents, but not a single permanent habitation. One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings." No one really lived in Palestine before Jews began resettling there.
We keep hearing how the Jews are encroaching on Arab land...but the Jews have built only 144 settlements compared to the Arabs' 261. If settling the West Bank is so provocative to peace, why do they keep doing it? In fact, since the Jews resettled Israel, it's become prosperous and Arabs have flocked there to be able to find jobs.
Arafat is no Palestinian - he was born in Egypt. As an outsider, this isn't really his fight. So why is he trying to kick the Jews off their land? Yes that's right, Israel belongs to the Jews. In 1854, 2/3 of the population of Jerusalem was Jewish according to none other than Karl Marx. In fact, though Jerusalem is supposed to be the third holiest site to Muslims, they paid little attention to it until it became a political issue with the Israeli state. Arabs didn't want to live in Palestine before 1948.
There are no "Palestinians". It's a convenient political fantasy. Before there was an Israel, there was no movement for an independent Palestinian homeland, because any attempt would have been squashed flat by the reigning Arab monarch.
Who's oppressed and who's the oppressor?
The thing is, for most of them, Israel isn't their home. Many of the original refugees were urged to leave by Arab leaders, but not welcomed into those countries. (If living with Jews is so bad to an Arab, wouldn't fellow Arabs be willing to give them a way out?) No other displaced people group in history has continued in "refugee" status for three generations! They either acclimated to where they were living, or someplace else accepted them so they moved on. They are unwilling to fit into Israel, and other A
Constitutionally Correct
"I understand this concern on behalf of the taxpayers. People want value for money. That's why we always insist on the principle of Information Retrieval charges. It's absolutely right and fair that those found guilty should pay for their periods of detention and the Information Retrieval procedures used in their interrogations."
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
You are a fucking TROLL. Get the fuck out of the US. I don't need your kind here. Fucking TROLL...
http://www.nimn.org/history/population.html
Check the above out for population trends. Before the forced expulsion, early 1900's population densities........ Look the same up from most if not all sources.
are my friend :)
thank you for playing...
Israel does have treaties with Egypt and Jordan.
The Syrians know to leave well enough alone; they'd liketo hold on to the Golan.
Some day Arafat's going to die.
The Palestinians are the majority in Jordan, and most of them want to stay there.
Shlomo's got a gun. And he's not going to give it up.
As to your throwaway about Israelis killing Palestinians faster than they can be born. Come on! The Palestinians have the advantage when it comes to Israelis or Palestinians killed. Specifically, the "massacres" at places like Jenin are turning out not to be, despite the fawning, lickspittle press that sees nothing bad in Arafat.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
"Land of the free home of the brave"
I think this would be more suiting to current public interests....
"Land of the police state home of the afraid"
Better suggestions are welcome!
I for one think we should change it to "fsck the oppressors"
--DarkFrog
If the dead rise again, we're going to have some serious population control issues.
Nobody complains when Batman is tracking a bad guy......
I won't bother responding to all your points, because I don't feel like wasting my time. Also don't assume I'm any more sympathetic to the Palestinian leadership (Arafat) than I am to the Israeli leadership. They're all assholes. The losers in all this stupidity are the everyday people. I wind up arguing the palestinian cause, because I think the common palestinian has gotten the rawest deal of all, and because my country seems to just blindly take Israels side no matter what.
"Israel has been accepting Jews from around the world since 1948"
Exactly. Israel has declared that all Jews have the right to live on this land, but non-Jews do not. Please entertain us with some twisted logic that says this is not racism.
"When Israel has taken territory during these unprovoked wars, it has repeatedly withdrawn peacefully"
Which is why Israel currently controls only the land defined by its 1967 borders right? Oh, wait. That would mean the very land on which the palestinians want to have their state, and then we wouldn't have a problem.
"Far more Jews have been displaced from Arab lands since 1948 than vice versa. (I wish I could find the link for this one - I remember reading it within the past year.)"
Probably it was from the same ultra-conservative blindly pro-Israel sources as the rest of your links and points, many of which are ridiculously bald-faced lies.
"Again, why do you think you can determine social policy for other nations?"
Clearly, I can't. But if you are asking who am to think I can tell other nations what their policies should be; that their policies are racist, evil, and doomed to failure: I am a free man, capable of making moral judgements and telling others they are wrong.
"If people are religious and want a religious society and/or a religious government, that's what they'll get. As long as the process itself is open, that's OK. Who are you to tell them they're wrong?"
Replace the word "religious" in that passage with "fascist" and read it again. Or if you want my take on the current state of Israel, use "racist". I believe any country is doomed to eternal unrest so long as it's policies are rooted in the assumption that some of it's residents are inherently superior to others based on their religion or ethnicity. I believe such policies are moraly repugnant and in short, evil. Since most religions assume their adherents are superior to others, I think governments should be secular.
I remember when I used to think that metal detectors at junior high schools was completely wacko. Now they want to track everybody's movements, read their private emails, and check up on their reading lists at the library. The United States is looking more like a prison every day.
I have no interest in being fingerprinted, video'd, interrogated, spied on, tracked, accosted, ID'd, grabbed, ordered, removed, detained; I do not care to experience any of the recent 'upgrades' in American internal policy. That's why even though I would like to visit some parts of the US, I will not be doing so any time soon. Maybe in 50 years, after the global war on... uh, whatever-it-was is over.
There is a whole world to investigate outside of the United States, thank goodness.
_khl
You can monitor everywhere I drive
if we can monitor everything YOU SAY
Too bad our Government can't be trusted. They'd have no problem recording every word they say (24/7) otherwise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
(Apparently, some ancient technology known as the "media" used to work, and another called "the Constitution" was also formerly useful. But we didn't replace the dilithium crystals or something.)
Tracking terrorists? While dozens of police cars head for the "last known" location of a target, the real terrorist can have a wonderful time planting bombs somewhere the hell else.
We're probably about 5 years away to improving any such system to the 1% level.
Tech Public Policy stuff
I won't reply to all your points, either. But one point I do want to make in reply to your "racism" claims.
The right to free association includes the right to exclusivism. If the golf clubs wants to limit admission to men only, that is the right of that group. If the people of Israel want to limit admission to Jews only, that is the right of that group. There doesn't have to be any claims of "inherent superiority" about this at all. It's simply a desire to cultivate a certain type of community, to associate with others that are similar to you in some way, as humanity is wont to do. And I see nothing wrong with that. It doesn't take any twists of logic to justify this at all.
Again, with your "replace the word with 'fascist' or 'racist'" remark: if that's the kind of government the people freely choose for themselves, that's their choice. You may not agree with it, I may not agree with it, but they have the right to be governed the way they want. As long as the process is open and participatory, government is derived from consent of the governed, and the rights of the minority are protected, there's nothing wrong with it. It is only when gov't gets above itself and starts imposing racist/religious/fascist policies on a public that does not support it that we begin to have a problem. (Though typically fascist governments do not have consent of the governed and racist governments typically do not protect minorities, so I have trouble imagining how that could come about...)
Also, I resent the implication that religious is equivalent to racist or fascist.
Ad hominem, ad hominem. Have you looked up the facts yourself, or are you just going to dismiss these as "some idiot conservative site"?
Constitutionally Correct
1984 has come and gone. The technology to track and identify individuals and vehicles is old news. The 'Ring around London' tracks all vehicles and individuals entering or leaving, and has photographed and helped identify IRA bombers. Last Super Bowl they photographed everyone who entered the stadium looking for terrorists and criminals with face recognition equipment.
m
d ynotics .htm
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I read a good chunk of the RFP. This isn't big brother technology, it is target aquisition technology. It will show the enemy presence in an area like radar shows where to drop the bombs. It sounds to me like it is driven by our current situation in Iraq, dealing with urban warfare. If we had this technology working we just deploy the sensors before the convoy goes through, and we can see the ambush before it hits.
We already have the technology to lock down an area with cameras, and identify and regulate everyone, that was developed 3 years ago. I like many DARPA programs. Here are some of my favorites.
The brain machine interface http://www.darpa.mil/dso/thrust/biosci/brainmi.ht
The attack robot
http://www.darpa.mil/dso/thrust/biosci/bio
http://www.darpa.mil/ato/programs/tmr.htm
Health (just like in video games)
http://www.darpa.mil/dso/thrust/biosci/pi
Ray Gun
http://www.darpa.mil/dso/thrust/matdev/usp_h
combat exoskeleton
http://www.darpa.mil/dso/thrust/matd
As you should - since we all know "security through obscurity" is a Bad Thing..
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
I believe that's the same disclaimer that was handed to me when I started volunteering my unpaid time for open source software.
*yawn* *grin* *hack*
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Consumerism is a choice! Do you want a flashy new car? If so, then you (rhetorical "you") have chosen to saddle yourself with debt to the tune of $10K to $40K or more. What's that? You need transportation? Travel by bus, bike, or foot; if that isn't acceptable, select a used vehicle and take a little time to learn how to take care of the basics. .
Shiny new toys? Well, must you have them to live until tomorrow? If not, then you can do without them. Certainly, one can buy whatever they like, up to their credit limit, but make no mistake... choosing to live an "oppressed and powerless" lifestyle due to debt is a choice
Disclaimer: I'm not sure how one would remain debt -free when purchasing a house. Rent is akin to throwing money down a rat hole, though, so there is some merit to that aspect of "debt."
Colbert: Damn, I can't find my keys. I'm going to kill the president!
*soldiers burst into the room*
Soldiers: GET DOWN ON THE GROUND!
Colbert: Hey, have you guys seen my keys?
Imagine the convenience!
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
"If the golf clubs wants to limit admission to men only, that is the right of that group."
And it is my right to tell them I think they are sexist pigs. In the case of golf clubs, I don't much care (though I would have loved to see the PGA say "No problem, we'll just have to find another venue for the Masters...") In the case of Governments which exert control over people to whom they do not give a voice, I care.
The golf clubs are sexist, but I don't have a problem with that. You don't need twists of logic, because while Israel is racist, you see nothing wrong with that. Well, at least your position is internally consistant.
"As long as the process is open and participatory, government is derived from consent of the governed, and the rights of the minority are protected, there's nothing wrong with it."
I agree entirely. Note that Nazi Germany only missed one of your three conditions (protecting the rights of the minority). For Palestinians in the West bank and Gaza, the Israeli occupation misses all 3. The process is not open or participatory, government is derived from having more guns, and their rights are not protected, even though they're the majority.
"Again, with your "replace the word with 'fascist' or 'racist'" remark: if that's the kind of government the people freely choose for themselves, that's their choice. You may not agree with it, I may not agree with it, but they have the right to be governed the way they want"
Did the white rulers of South Africa have the right to choose Aparthied? Is is your impression that the Palestinians in the West Bank have freely chosen to live under a military occupation? The Palestinians also have the right to be governed as they want.
"It is only when gov't gets above itself and starts imposing racist/religious/fascist policies on a public that does not support it that we begin to have a problem."
Which is exactly what the Israeli govenment is doing to the Palestinians.
"Also, I resent the implication that religious is equivalent to racist or fascist"
I have implied no such thing, so please do not take offense. Your religious beliefs are your own as mine are my own. If you consider yourself, and others who believe as you do to be superior to me because I do not believe as you do, then I think your religion is morally bankrupt, but still, you are welcome to it. If you wish to impose a government on me that accords greater rights to people who believe as you do, we have a problem. I suppose a religious government could respect the rights of non-believers, but even though I've studied a fair bit of history, I can't think of a single example. In my not so humble opinion, religiously based government is bad, bad news.
"Ad hominem, ad hominem. Have you looked up the facts yourself, or are you just going to dismiss these as 'some idiot conservative site'?"
You don't seem to know what ad hominem means. My judgement of the site you repeatedly linked was based on your links, and looking around it a bit. I suppose the "ultra" and "blindly" is a bit perjorative. But the site is definetly quite conservative, and certainly pro-Israel. I have in fact looked up many of the facts myself. I have also heard and researched some of the more outlandish claims made by those wishing to discredit the grievances of the Palestinians. You hit most of them, including the real tip off that you are willing to accept any and all propaganda: "there are no Palestinians". Palestinians and Jews both lived in that area before recorded history (they fought a lot then too), and in greater or lesser numbers (but never zero) ever since. Who cares. They are both there now, and they can find a way to live together peacefully, or they can keep killing each other. Neither is leaving. Thanks to the US, Israel has all the guns, and is in control. So I think the ball is in their court. There will certainly continue to be terrorist attacks against them; they can continue to pursue their current policies if they wish to maximize popular support for these attacks, or they could try something different.
Keep the faith!
Besides, imagine what happens when someone Bluescreens national security . . .
As likely a motivation for government adoption of Linux as I've heard.
Ah, but the question is, which "they" do you trust more? The "they" that is the government, that hasn't succeeded in enforcing anti-drug laws? Or the "they" that is our corporations, that has succeeded in getting the DMCA passed, has sued college students, and has succeeded to have an organization that allows them to legally pass information that doesn't have to be correct (Credit Bureaus) that allows them to alter the cost of living for you personally by adjusting your ability to borrow money or get a house? As for me, I'll take my government over a corporation any day. PG County cops have been investigated for holding people and prosecuting them without due cause. A company held my wife in a back room when she was younger, and refused to allow her food, drink or to let anyone know where she was until she signed a paper proclaiming her guilt to credit card theft. (Fortunatly, the government didn't believe it). The company is still doing business, and hasn't paid any fines, even though they did this to 500 employees.