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Sci-fi Writer Elizabeth Moon Believes Everyone Should Be Chipped
Bob the Super Hamste writes "The BBC has an opinion piece from science fiction writer Elizabeth Moon who believes that everyone should be chipped or barcoded at birth. Her reasoning is that it would prevent identification mistakes and even allow soldiers to identify combatants from non-combatants. Her comments came as part of a discussion on future wars hosted by the BBC World Service."
Horrible, dystopian, inevitable.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Dont forget to put them in prison exactly after their birth, because, we will know from the very beginning who is the robber, killer, gangster, etc.... Why stop here? Why not give them the appropriate degree and job once they are born, then i wonder, what would be the future assignment of the "Pizza Delivery Boy"? Any guesses? Fry, you shut up, we already know your case.
I'd rather be misidentified than have my ID chip blacklisted. Do something the government doesn't like? They disable your chip... then you're screwed. No thanks.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Oh, I'm sure parliament has some sort of plan to do just that. It will be under the guise of helping to track children kidnapped by terrorists and forced into the sex trade.
It's called DNA.
I am not a number.
Kindly STFU.
One sec....k, i am done, my black list has a new member. Thank you slashdot, for helping me update my database of "DO NOT READ" list.
I have been a serious fan of Elizabeth Moon for years - she is an awesome SciFi author; however, this is just nuts! Sure it would eliminate a lot of mis-identification cases, but I would bet that 10 seconds after they started to do this, there would be those who would get theirs replaced with other peoples' id chips. Talk about identity theft! "Honestly officer! That could not have been me that robbed that bank!"...
It takes a nut to write sci-fi. Not that I don't appreciate what sci-fi writers contribute. Let's just keep them out any position of influence,
I do believe that my bottom makes a lot better sound, and it is even with reason, unlike you, parent troll.
To bring up Hitler?
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
There's sound reasoning in her statements
No, there isn't. I've read more reasonable statements coming out of the PR offices of Scientology.
I'm not even a smart guy and I can put 2 and 2 together here. ,............ this screams "please read my books" or "I have a new book coming, I need my name out there in popular culture for a couple of weeks!"
NOTE: "Sci-fi writer"
We're better than this aren't we?
...when she was attacked by the FailFandom brigade for comments ever-so-mildly critical of Islam.
But I strongly oppose this. A government with the power to barcode everyone at birth is the sort of government powerful enough to commit just about any abuse of its citizens. And the well-connected will still be able to get data related to their barcode altered for their benefit.
I'll pass on the Panopticon society, thank you. And strong private property laws are the first step from preventing it from happening.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
a chip or a barcode on the skin...
oh, wait.
coding is life
Hitler believed that everyone should be "Aryan". Not every opinion, belief or idea warrants attention or response.
So the primary benefit listed to chipping everyone, being able to identify and avoid citizens in war, only helps make something we'd like to eliminate completely in the future more efficient. I don't think I'll get on board with this, considering the consequences.
...Then you realize how easy it would be to simply copy or steal someone else's identity...
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Dear Elizabeth Moon:
The world does not have one culture. Many do not have the same goals or motivations as yours, some have a different culture, religion, history, sense of self, pride and worth from what you experience in your circles.
I understand how one comes to love one's own culture. It's obvious, really: you make certain choices and it suits you well, the natural conclusion is that if everyone made those choices, they would do as well.
This is wrong, and you should learn to identify the ways in which it is wrong. Hasidic Jews do not try to force their ideas on everyone else, we generally don't allow White Supremacists to force their views on everyone else, and we try not to allow other cultures to terrorize us into following their views.
We are not breaking the law, we are quite happy doing what we do, and we don't need to be forced into things "for our own betterment". You needn't concern yourself about our welfare.
At all.
Feel free to convince everyone in your circle of friends, associates, or community to chip, but please don't try to force your views on everyone, who may have a different opinion.
Signed: Someone with a fucking clue.
and driver's licenses to some degree.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Another global consequence: a new new angle of attack. Hack the "world database of people ids" and set people you don't like as "hostile combatants". A wonderful way to get other governments to kill people you want to die by claiming they are hostile to that government.
Storage required: lets say, 10 billion people. 50k each (plenty, in text form for a lot of info - bank balance, security clearance, red/blue list, shoot on sight flag, etc). we've still got a shitload of room on a 1tb SATA drive. Government SAN storage is much, much larger.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
...that spells moon.
An inconsequential person has an idiotic belief. This isn't news to anyone.
If they put it on my shoulder, I'll be very angry...
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
Only someone completely ignorant of the world she lives in- what battling computer viruses is like and -what deep seated and destabilizing animosity such programs would engender - could possibly proffer such a ridiculous statement.
This is publicity hounding and nothing ore, one hopes.
I'll likely get down modded for this like crazy, but I think everyone is over reacting a huge amount. I actually listened to the clips and it is clear that Elizabeth is talking about a hypothetical situation. She isn't saying she advocates chipping everyone with ID chips in the real world. She was discussing a fictional hypothetical situation she even states it "if I were empress of the universe". Plus she does discuss, the privacy implications, and it's very reasoned. Her main objective was for some sort of method to identify Friend of Foe on the battlefield. She even admits to draw backs and such. You guys are acting like she is some raving lunatic wanting to destroy your lives.
OK, I will then.
Also (the second beast) causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. Revelation 13:16-17 ESV
The concept is hardly original to Ms. Moon....
Bar code on the skin? Nothing new at all. This is so last millennium. My high school shop teacher had a numeric code tattooed on his arm. In order to avoid problems with miss-identification, just like Elizabeth proposes. It was a little gift he got as part of the welcome package when he checked into the German Stalag.
I somehow don't think he would have much positive to say about Elizabeth's proposal if he were alive to hear it.
Uh that's just the ID and profile. You're not including the tracked info for events, behavior and relationships. Look at a Facebook personal page. The profile is just 1% of the data in the timeline and that's just what a person volunteers.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
There is no sound reasoning. We are barcoded from birth with DNA. The problem is with who manages and uses the database. If you're no paranoid already, you will be.....and they are after you.
Nos Morituri te salutamus
Worse yet. The groups who will be shooting won't have chips or will be listed as citizens but will still have guns shooting at you. So this would only prevent friendly fire accidents and could create major problems for determining enemy combatant status (as if it's not hard enough already).
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Here we are discussing her absurd ideas. This is a media troll plain and simple. Her agent is happy. Her publisher is happy.
How to media troll? One leads out a sacred cow and kills it. (In this case she has lead out the presumption of anonymity for innocents in a free society. We accept as sacred doctrine (and rightly IMHO) the idea that branding someone is an act society reserves for criminals. And, furthermore, that only a criminal society would brand everyone.) Preferably you kill your cow in the town square with a chain saw.
To slaughter effectively one has to have some kind of pulpit, some authority, albeit small. I saw a squib today about a preacher who proposed concentration camps for gays and lesbians. He did it on video. Some well-meaning people plan to protest outside his church. He'll get support and money from the haters. It was a classic media troll. The shock jocks and radio pundits are past masters of this. It is even a way to make a name for oneself in the sciences. With a weak degree one can attack some established tower of truth and get on Fox news and sell thousands books to the ignorant. So you won't get tenured, big deal, you can lick your wounds on your yacht. Well played Ms. Moon. You will sell more books. Go on TV and get some speaking fees.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
Works both ways. Non-combatants who pick up weapons and start shooting should be re-labeled. Victims of abuse, negligence or criminal violence should not.
How do you tell post-humously? A chip isn't going to help in most cases.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Yes, and I'm not using a 10 million dollar storage array for it either.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Then one hundred 1 TB drives.
To clarify, my point was this: you can store a significant amount of useful (for evil) purposes without needing to store every single detail of a person's life. People of interest could have several gig each and you'd still have plenty of space on an appropriately specced government storage array.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Cost to replace can be excessive, depending on where it is located. You don't need to deny the 1% who can afford a black market medical procedure to control 99% of the population quite easily with this.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
The enemy will not be chipped.
I propose she start by getting a chip herself first then we will see.
How about the identical twins, triplets, quadruplets?
Normal DNA tests won't be able to identify which one is which
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
from the only man on earth called Elizabeth
Only if their prints are on file. If everyone is chipped at birth, their chip ID will certainly be on file from birth.
But wouldn't it be easier to take fingerprints and even DNA samples at birth?
All I need to know is: "Was George the Thickth brought up on the fairy tales written by this woman?" and I will have an answer for most of the history of the USA since WW 2.
I actually did some number crunching on record-keeping for all of humanity. We have plenty of capacity.
Now, even with this horribly inefficient setup we could easily fit enough storage for basic data on the whole world's population in a single rack. You could even put hourly GPS coordinate snapshots for everyone over the last 24 hours into the system and still have it fit in a rack. Now imagine some optimizations. A unique identifier, leave most of the personal data in national databases that you can query from your own db and instead have say, current coordinates, hourly snapshots for the last 48 hours and 3-4 snapshots per day for the last couple of weeks. You could track everyone.
There are definitely those who would find such a system very useful.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Prolly the only folk you are not a number for, are your local friends/family.
Nah, if he has a will, he's still a number for them.
Write failed: Broken pipe
Dear Ms moon;
Yes this will be fine as soon as we can trust every single person in the government... for every government.
In other words, we will get to it during the reign of Queen Dick.
(Hey Spider, Thanks for everything. Beers on me, or Bushmills.:)
Worse yet. The groups who will be shooting won't have chips or will be listed as citizens but will still have guns shooting at you.
Worse even than that. The groups who don't have the right chips (for whatever value of "right" you care to use) will be coming after you with their pocket knives to 'liberate' yours.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Why prepare to have your sons and daughters Id when they die in war? If you have 18+ years to prepare for something, why not work on diplomacy? You have the time....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
...no implants, dammit!
Table-ized A.I.
J. Edgar Hoover wanted this, actually national ID cards with fingerprints. I'm sure he'd be thinking DNA and RFID today. Back then, people railed at the idea of a Social Security number. That was why the government promised that it would remain confidential and only be used for SS benefits. LOL
NOT a sci-fi writer.
Anyway, I listened to the piece. At the end she said it would work in fiction. They do discuss the downside of chipping everyone. I guess the question is, do the benefits outweigh the risks? There are benefits, but the dangers posed by chipping are far greater. There would be no anonymity for the most powerful and spies. The apparatus of power would want the 99% chipped, but not themselves, the 1%. We already live in a police state. If your name gets put on a no fly list, you are screwed. There is no appeal even when the government fucks up. The technology is getting so we don't need to be chipped.
If you know anything about Elizabeth and her politics she is anything but a totalitarian. But as usual slashdot distorts and commenters blather on what they know jack shit about.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
not only that, but the "nothing to hide" argument stops being useful if you stop assuming the police and the government in your country (especially the police and government from 10 years in the future) are friendly and have my best interests at heart. I may think I have nothing to hide now, but say the next government voted in decides to expel all jews, or first-and-second-generation immigrants, imprison all Islamics - they already have that data, my location, and means of identifying me, I'm screwed - and all thanks to the previous government who were happy and friendly and trustworthy and introduced this database and got voted out.
10,000,000,000 * 50Kb = 500,000,000,000 Kb = 488,281,250 Mb = 476,837 Gb = 465.66 Tb = 58.2 TB.
Not atsronomical, but still a hell of a lot more than 1TB...
And why would a chip make identity management so much easier than existing DNA? If our DNA cannot be forcibly taken for recording into a national database, why should our "chip" be allowed to be?!?
If our society remains ultimatley ad hoc and individual driven then a chipped id system is not required. But if the government and our whole existence in society is determined by the government's impression of our personal identity then we'll likely need to be chipped.
Social security numbers, medicade, welfare, food stamps... it's very hard to keep track of all that and fraud increases exponentially with the profit in committing it which increases exponentially as you increase the benefits across an increasingly large population.
And of course, individuals feel no need to protect their id from fraud in these situations. If it's their bank account or their money then they care. But if it's the government's money no one cares. And that merely makes fraud easier.
as increased socialization is likely inevitable so too are increasingly invasive means of determining identity.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Or carry a dead "friendly" combatant's chip in their pocket. If you think stealing a dead man's uniform is useful, wait until you can still their credentials and FFI with a pocket knife!
But how long before a longer range detection system is invented that can be built into drones and track personal movements so that a direct targeted missile can be used to crack someones head open at the press of a button. This will go down well in certain parts of the world a whole new business will open up forging chips and replacing them it will make car registration theft look like a poor relation. Or we have the Chinese hackers steal birth records of US 1st Infantry division, wars by proxy indeed no risk here - move along...
Who tried this before on human beings ? The Nazis in the concentration camps.
I think that Elizabeth Moon and those who have such awful ideas about our future should be chopped.
I like her books, but i think she is way off here.
It would not reduce civilian casualties, but it would increase surveillance and opression. Just think how this would have worked out here in Germany during the Hitler-years....
Revelations Ch 13
16 It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads,
17 so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
Obviously this wouldn't apply to cutting parts of their nadgers off. A man in the sky said to do that, so it's OK.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That's because you're an innumerate baboon.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The difference between distopian and utopian is only in the application of technology.
Imagine the benefits of such a technology if there was no crime, and no government citizen spying.
Never again would a wrong blood transfusion be given, if you have an accident the ambulance would know your allergies instantly, not that there'd be as many accidents as disqualified drivers may actually stay disqualified. No need to worry about losing a credit card since the payment could be made based on the chip in you person. I could think of some good end-to-end encryption / verification systems which could improve security (auto logins on computers). Or how about the Bill Gates system of a house that is smart enough to adjust tastes depending on who is in the room, with art, music, mood lighting, etc.
The difference between a distopia and a utopia is the existence of bad guys in the story, nothing more. All the technology and its application is the same. The only thing which differs is who uses it and for what purpose.
Nuff said.
I'm sure there are, and i suggest a codename for them: ZOMBIES. That would be a military intelligence adopted acronym for "put a bullet in their brainpan to make sure."
I just typed military intelligence without laughing outloud....will wonders never cease.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Of course this only works if you trust those who control it.
enough said.
GeoKone.NET
I believe that everyone else should be chipped. Mwahahaha.
Luckily, the Constitution still applies to everyone, including babies. And the Supreme Court has ruled on it, too.
Elizabeth Moon has the right to chip herself, but she cannot force anyone else to do so, except maybe her own children, until they reach the age of Majority.
Bonus: captcha is Aliens
According to her bio on wikipedia, her kid is autistic, so the chip probably helps when he gets off his leash. I wonder if her child is one of the truly unlucky ones, or the result of tempting fate/mother nature by getting knocked up too late in life.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Isn't DNA better? changing DNA significantly is much harder, and just plain impossible with today's technology.
The stuff she mentions is easily removable, tradable, or hackable in comparison to making major modifications to DNA.
This has to be one of the dumbest things I have ever heard. let's see reasons not to 1 the Nazi's basically did this in the concentration camps. 2 it's a sign of the apocalypse. 3 how is a chip suppose to know who is friend and who is foe. 4 say goodbey to your freedom and it is just screaming opportunity for abuse. Could keep going.
Number 1 is a bad reason. There were plenty of intelligent things the Nazis did. Just because they sometimes did them for psychotic, amoral reasons is no reason to discount everything they did.
Number 3 has popped up elsewhere, and makes no sense. Of course the chip doesn't know what's going on. But presumably soldiers will have some sort of scanner that is programmed with known friendly IDs. Anyone else is a potential enemy. Look up IFF transponders.
Not saying I agree with it, just saying your arguments against are pretty weak.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Filip J. Fry, is that you ?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=identical-twins-genes-are-not-identical
I did read that article before I post
And if you read it, you will notice one thing - the twins started 100% identical.
Somehow the more they age, their respective copy of DNA undergoes slight mutation, and the more "different" their DNAs become
Well ...
Taking this a step further --- if identical twins' DNA can change, so can our DNA !
That is, my DNA sample taken 20 years ago may not be exactly match the DNA that I am having now
Think about it !!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
At least she didn't start a cult, or become obsessed by writing about why nubile young girls should screw old men and call them "daddy", and yes, I'm looking at you, Heinlein's Grave.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Even in the future when everyone is barcoded and chipped they will not use them in war on the battle field.
Because it would be far too easy to fake and to jam and to intercept.
Loved her fantasy books, but I guess it was a good thing that i never read her scifi because she is obviously not very good at it.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
they way I hear it- a lot of people think the government
still owes them 40 acres and a mule
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
so one and a half million people..
looking around at other sources
I find that identical twins are actually near 1/300ish
which would be 22 million of the duplicious folk.
I'm not in favor of chipping... but 22 million is more than teeny tiny
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
She said too much, too late.compulsory chipping on people is absurd, and it's already in use for animal trackind and identification.
some people, for medical or insanity reasons, use it too. If I remembers correctly, Kai Byron from Mythbusters is RFID tagged. (no sources here, sorry, no time now)
I heard the programme. I get it as a podcast.
Someone is given 60 seconds to make a suggestion that would change the world. Has nobody else never had to take part in a debate? This is a mental exercise or entertainment not a serious statement of intent. The previous week, the speaker suggested that as people took too many crummy digital pictures, we should all be limited to one picture per day.
Go and listen to the article and get some context before criticising what we can all agree would be a seriously bad idea.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Floppy hats and long hair across the face.
Would not help if the chip has RFID or similar remote detection capabilities, which was implied by the article. Your every movement through places equipped with suitable detectors would be tracked and recorded for later analysis. Probably all entrances to government buildings and popular public venues (even park gates) would be covered in such detectors. Persons passing through without a chip could be regarded as de facto suspects to be stopped and interrogated, and lack of a chip in any public place would become sufficient cause for body cavity searches.
Keep a faintly optimistic expression on your face at all times, brother.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
So we need a universal way to identify individuals? We have thumbprints. Moon could just as easily have called for portable devices to scan thumbs and identify the people attached to said thumbs, but she didn't. She had to make it all weird and terrifying by suggesting a well-known staple of horrifying dystopian societies. Oh how sci-fi writers have changed!
While I don't doubt that she does (who doesn't, these days), and what it would be is probably easily guessed (she's Texan, after all)... how do you get that from her wiki page? I looked at it and it's pretty sparse.
but...but...if I get chipped then I wont be able to become a crime lord. Which of course would be the stepping stone towards world domination. /end sarcasm
Hard core criminals might start stealing IDs by physically cutting chips out of people.
Regardless of how many kings or other entities in the past have decided to try to implement this, the prophecies concerning the restoration of the nation of Israel had not yet come to pass, so the actual anti-Christ that the Bible warns us about could not have come. Now that the prophecies concerning the state of Israel have come about, there is more reason to be concerned... and to be ready for Christ's return.
She's lived in the US - which, on any other day than today, is a police state in Slashdot's collective mind.
Big Brother is proud of us all, and that is how it should be. You need to stop inciting free-thought and turn yourself in at the nearest detention facility.
She starts with "If I were empress of the Universe" which is an important part of her statement. There would be a lot of things I and anyone else who wanted to stay the absolute ruler of the universe would do to secure power, and make things run smoothly with little disregard for the desires of the lowly "people" that wouldn't be viable in today's society. She didn't advocate chipping everyone now, just when she rules the universe.
Shawn Moore http://www.teuse.net
Of how much Sci-Fi is really out there and how so much of it is poorly written crap.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
How about not having wars in the future at all, instead of trying to "humanely" differentiate between combatants and non-combatants.
"He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name. This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666." Revelation 13:16-18
I use this alot lately. Get the RFID for ID or you can't shop or buy... etc... It's coming closer.
First of all, this is giving EMP weapons more leverage if you rely too heavily on it. The ephemeral nature of security is also a problem.
I'm also reminded of some plans by some to use RFID tags to decide who is allowed to trade on the market and who is not. I'm wondering whether the efficiency gains are worth the effort. For so little privacy, I at least demand the availability of a far denser power source than diesel to me, i.e. where is my nuclear powered flying car.
Je me souviens.
Ban warfare before tagging humans.
As Mathew7 mentions, while DNA should be 'digital' with 2 bits per pair, in practice the way we sample it isn't, not really. Especially when you consider doing hereditary searches where you're looking for a 'half match'.
I should have mentioned the non-exact match thing; Searching a DB for something like 'All phone calls from XXX-XXX-XXXX for the past 20 years' is far easier than searching for Person X's DNA 'fingerprint' in the DB. Fingerprint databases are even worse; they spit out 'similar' matches, often leaving the human experts hundreds of semi-matching prints to search through for final ID, and that's only looking through criminal records, not something like 'every adult in the USA'.
I don't read AC A human right
Fingerprints, iris patterns, and retinal patterns are essentially bar codes already.
in her current fantasy series, the Bad Guys can use dark magic to inhabit the bodies of Good Guys (or, well, anyone). so maybe we _really_ need to barcode the soul!
. . . to kill, detain, or avoid my soldiers/special ops, by putting a chip in them so you can track them at all times, and launch remotely guided ordinance programmed to seek their GUIDs. Brilliant plan.
It's like she's never even heard of a covert operation.
It can't be remotely read (at least not yet), which is a good thing for many reasons, but everyone already has a (almost unique) code (I say almost, because there is the case of twins/triplets/etc which share DNA). It's just that you have to take a physical sample to "read" their code.
If it can stop even a single case like that Garrido monster, I am all for it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_Jaycee_Lee_Dugard
Bram Stolk http://stolk.org/tlctc/
Cheers, mental calc fail... and yes, its not astronomical by any stretch. Given that some (admittedly big corp) regional offices here in Perth, WA have > petabytes of storage in their local office storage array.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
When was the last time I read something from you?
Nothing to see here -- move along now...
If we implement the tags, we could have computer simulations run to determine damage done instead of using real ammo that causes needless collateral damage and destruction of property. The the losers could report to death stations to be disposed off....
It would help make our society so much more tidy and efficient...
*cough*....
At least till someone came along and violated their prime directive...
hmmm
Why is that so many people jump in, guns blazing, when they see an inflammatory one-liner, without bothering to get any context, background information or - dare I say it - facts? A lot of people have posted things on this thread to/about Elizabeth Moon that are offensive, insulting and hurtful to her and her family. Why? Because the person who started this thread came up with a provocative one-liner, provided a couple of links that don't give casual surfers any context, and sat back with popcorn to enjoy the show. Now I'll grant you, the BBC did much the same with that mini-article hyping the radio broadcast. Their intent was to "hook" people into going and listening to the full-length podcast. Unfortunately, they seem to have assumed that most of their listeners would already be familiar enough with the radio show to know that the "60 second idea" portion (which is what has everyone's shorts in a bundle) isn't necessarily intended to be serious. Clearly, that was an invalid assumption. For anyone actually interested in learning the truth, M. Moon has posted an account of the whole experience - including the unexpected reactions, and the minor detail that she doesn't actually believe that everyone should be chipped - on her blog. It can be seen here: http://e-moon60.livejournal.com/442811.html As you can see, this outburst of unpleasantness against Ms. Moon is completely unjustified and ill-informed. It's the job of a SF writer to put ideas out there which are thought provoking, which make us stop and question our existence and the world around us. The good ones really stir things up and leave a lasting impression. They should NOT be subjected to an outpouring of abuse for doing a good job. C'mon people, exercise a few brain cells, here. And maybe take the time to apologize to the woman you abused so unfairly.
Umm, actually no, you don't have a clue. See my post below: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2868075&cid=40102857
Why is that so many people jump in, guns blazing, when they see an inflammatory one-liner, without bothering to get any context, background information or - dare I say it - facts?
A lot of people have posted things on this thread to/about Elizabeth Moon that are offensive, insulting and hurtful to her and her family. Why? Because the person who started this thread came up with a provocative one-liner, provided a couple of links that don't give casual surfers any context, and sat back with popcorn to enjoy the show.
Now I'll grant you, the BBC did much the same with that mini-article hyping the radio broadcast. Their intent was to "hook" people into going and listening to the full-length podcast. Unfortunately, they seem to have assumed that most of their listeners would already be familiar enough with the radio show to know that the "60 second idea" portion (which is what has everyone's shorts in a bundle) isn't necessarily intended to be serious. Clearly, that was an invalid assumption.
For anyone actually interested in learning the truth, M. Moon has posted an account of the whole experience - including the unexpected reactions, and the minor detail that she doesn't actually believe that everyone should be chipped - on her blog. It can be seen here: http://e-moon60.livejournal.com/442811.html As you can see, this outburst of unpleasantness against Ms. Moon is completely unjustified and ill-informed. It's the job of a SF writer to put ideas out there which are thought provoking, which make us stop and question our existence and the world around us. The good ones really stir things up and leave a lasting impression. They should NOT be subjected to an outpouring of abuse for doing a good job.
C'mon people, exercise a few brain cells, here. And maybe take the time to apologize to the woman you abused so unfairly.
Mod parent up, people really need to do more than just read the headline and comment. This is Slashdot not Huffington post, you people know better.