I wish I could be so optimistic. It just seems like London's camera network all over again. There have been studies that show it's not actually effective in solving crimes. Yet that doesn't keep people from pushing it forward. And now with the "terrorism" fallback excuse, it will get even worse.
Again, as many people pointed out, ALL the RFID-in-your-clothes would give you is that the RFID chip is somewhere. That's why I pointed out that it doesn't tell you a kid is still inside. You still need to do the old fashioned head count, one way or the other. You should put absolutely ZERO faith in a reading or lack of reading from a chip. Otherwise, you're sending firefighters into burning buildings to rescue jackets. Or some kids were jacking around and popped the RFID chips out and one guy is carrying a couple just to mess with the system, and then you miss that there really IS a kid in the burning building.
So RFID chips in this situation are actually worse than useless.
There's a huge difference between the government being able to subpoena your records and records of your movement (e.g. cellphone provider logs) and the government being able to have "always-on" monitoring of you at all times "just in case." Automated tracking via software elevates government snooping to whole new levels that would never be possible with simple "sight." It's not really fair to compare the two.
Your other points are somewhat valid, but if you can't see that, I don't think you're qualified to make any judgments on Schneier or other security experts.
Only magnetic and optical storage have the luxury of defining units in non-power-of-2 ways, and yet they generally do not Actually, the interesting thing is that DVDs are labeled in MB (base 10), not MiB (base 2). This is the same as hard drives. CDs, on the other hand, are labeled in MiB (base 2).
Network speeds (Kbps, Mbps, Gbps, etc.) are also listed in base 10, not base 2. That confused me for a while, as well.
In another post, one person claims USB memory sticks are labeled base 10, as well (can't confirm).
I'm afraid I just disagree. When you say "laypeople", you have to remember that the voting public is composed of a distribution of intelligence from smart to dumb, just like any other randomly selected group of people. I'll admit even IRV is probably going to go over a certain percentages head. But at least with IRV, even if they don't understand how the guts of the math work, at least they understand the questions "Who is your top choice? Who is your second favorite? Who is your third favorite?", etc. RP cannot be so simplified, and will leave a lot of people confused and angry about it.
I wouldn't call IRV half-baked. I would call it the less theoretically perfect. On the other hand, I would say that it has a lot of social aspects in which it comes out ahead of RP. Democracy is a system of trade-offs, and one in which theory falls secondary to real world usability. RP voting is never going to happen on a widespread scale until we somehow manage to raise the median IQ and lower the median laziness of the voting public. However, IRV is already happening in some locations and actually has a shot at eventually being used in the national races. It is less theoretically perfect than RP, but it is much better than plurality and actually gives 3rd party candidates a chance at breaking the two party gridlock. So I'm all for IRV until we manage to get that utopia thing up and running.
Well, currently they have made it illegal to gamble online with any (non same-state horse racetrack) gambling site. That, in and of itself, is "regulation." They already enforce that regulation with the only means they have - arresting members of the companies when they set foot in the US, and making financial transactions to those companies not void.
But this is really a moot point. It's like saying "how do you regulate gambling when there are illegal bookies and people can play for-cash poker at home?" The point is not to try to regulate everything, but to provide enough legitimate, regulated outlets to drown out the shady ones. There would have been a plethora of companies that are based in the US that would have signed on for US regulation. Even plenty of the offshore ones would have willingly done whatever the US govt wanted in order to get a piece of the pie.
Well, the original statement is clearly hyperbole. But consider that the total number of active duty military personnel is 1.4 million, I think 500k-750k dedicated terrorists already in the country could do some pretty devastating damage. You could pick the top 50 strategic targets and send 10k-15k terrorists to each. Imagine if they all had stockpiled military grade weapons and explosives. Considering the state of our military today, and considering the total SNAFU that Katrina was, how well do you think we'd be able to fend it off? Local law enforcement could only do so much against machine guns, grenades and RPGs.
Not that I think this scenario is likely. The more people you get in on a plan, the harder it becomes. The logistical nightmare of trying to organize and keep such a large plan secret would be almost insurmountable.
Right, I never said otherwise. Again, this is in response to the OP claiming the ban was because the gambling sites were unregulated. Just wanted to show that this was not the legitimate reason or illegitimate pretense used, as it would be easy to solve by providing regulation.
Perhaps I should have said unregulated instead of unscrupulous.
If this were the case, they would have provided a regulatory framework. There were plenty of firms that would have loved to have signed up. You don't have to cheat to make a lot of money as a gambling company.
I heard some of the congressional debate on this. Lot's of senators/reps going on and on about how internet gambling is way more addictive and people lose their house/job/family because it's so accessible. There may have been a lot of behind the scenes lobbying power, but up front most of the argument I heard was about keeping people from legitimately gambling away their lives.
Actually, I would think this would be WORSE than playing on a DS. The amount of distance to move your eyes/head from the touch screen to the tv and back and forth would be a pain. Only way I think it would work is if the TV was split screen and acted as both the top and bottom, with a floating cursor showing where your pen is on the handheld touchscreen. Even then it wouldn't be quite the same, I think. That's the problem with the DS, if you want to try to emulate it on the TV. I think it will also be a problem in the years ahead when the DS is gone and you want to go back and play the old titles with an emulator. Guess you'll have to hope we have the whole virtual reality thing down by then.
I'd settle for certain gameboy games getting redone as SuperNES-quality sidescrollers. Metroid II tops the list. I'd like to play a lot of them, but just wouldn't be able to put up with the graphics. Unfortunately, when these things get remade they tend to wind up no the newer Nintendo handheld. That was OK when it was the GBA, as I could use a gameboy player (did that for Metroid Zero Mission). But I wonder if I'll ever play DS games due to lack of a good way to play them on a TV.
Well, consider that judges can declare mistrials when juries break the rules in various ways (watch television, talk to the parties involved, etc.). And in this case, the judge apparently even jailed the jury. So I'm assuming he thought there was juror misconduct. And if you say the outcome of this case was the foundation for jury nullification, then there must not have already been jury nullification. So the jury could not claim they had a right to juror nullification from a previous precedent. If you run out of jurors (no more alternates), you can declare a mistrial. All of this just makes me wonder.
Interesting to hear the origins. Just curious, though - why didn't he declare a mistrial? I would have thought he would take at least one more crack at it with a different jury.
Well, you seem to have a pretty good crusade against me going. Far be it from me to stop you. Instead, I'll just finish my posting on this topic with two links:
I call your attention to the Score column on each. Considering your pitiful starting karma, it's even more sad that not a single one of your comments was thought to be worth even a point. On the other hand, plenty of mine have been modded up (including the ones you link to), one even to five.
So yeah, I'm going to have to go with the outside observers on this. Most of them see the same picture of you that I see, and it's not good.
Slashdot Mirror
I wish I could be so optimistic. It just seems like London's camera network all over again. There have been studies that show it's not actually effective in solving crimes. Yet that doesn't keep people from pushing it forward. And now with the "terrorism" fallback excuse, it will get even worse.
After reading your other posts (and responding to them to point out the errors), I stand by my original statements.
Again, as many people pointed out, ALL the RFID-in-your-clothes would give you is that the RFID chip is somewhere. That's why I pointed out that it doesn't tell you a kid is still inside. You still need to do the old fashioned head count, one way or the other. You should put absolutely ZERO faith in a reading or lack of reading from a chip. Otherwise, you're sending firefighters into burning buildings to rescue jackets. Or some kids were jacking around and popped the RFID chips out and one guy is carrying a couple just to mess with the system, and then you miss that there really IS a kid in the burning building.
So RFID chips in this situation are actually worse than useless.
There's a huge difference between the government being able to subpoena your records and records of your movement (e.g. cellphone provider logs) and the government being able to have "always-on" monitoring of you at all times "just in case." Automated tracking via software elevates government snooping to whole new levels that would never be possible with simple "sight." It's not really fair to compare the two.
Your other points are somewhat valid, but if you can't see that, I don't think you're qualified to make any judgments on Schneier or other security experts.
The kid or the kid's jacket? Would you want to send firefighters in to rescue the jacket?
Network speeds (Kbps, Mbps, Gbps, etc.) are also listed in base 10, not base 2. That confused me for a while, as well.
In another post, one person claims USB memory sticks are labeled base 10, as well (can't confirm).
I'm afraid I just disagree. When you say "laypeople", you have to remember that the voting public is composed of a distribution of intelligence from smart to dumb, just like any other randomly selected group of people. I'll admit even IRV is probably going to go over a certain percentages head. But at least with IRV, even if they don't understand how the guts of the math work, at least they understand the questions "Who is your top choice? Who is your second favorite? Who is your third favorite?", etc. RP cannot be so simplified, and will leave a lot of people confused and angry about it.
I wouldn't call IRV half-baked. I would call it the less theoretically perfect. On the other hand, I would say that it has a lot of social aspects in which it comes out ahead of RP. Democracy is a system of trade-offs, and one in which theory falls secondary to real world usability. RP voting is never going to happen on a widespread scale until we somehow manage to raise the median IQ and lower the median laziness of the voting public. However, IRV is already happening in some locations and actually has a shot at eventually being used in the national races. It is less theoretically perfect than RP, but it is much better than plurality and actually gives 3rd party candidates a chance at breaking the two party gridlock. So I'm all for IRV until we manage to get that utopia thing up and running.
It's not you. It's just you who thinks it wasn't that way to begin with. ;)
I wonder how this handles low- and no-light situations. Big floodlights on each side of the vehicle?
Well, currently they have made it illegal to gamble online with any (non same-state horse racetrack) gambling site. That, in and of itself, is "regulation." They already enforce that regulation with the only means they have - arresting members of the companies when they set foot in the US, and making financial transactions to those companies not void.
But this is really a moot point. It's like saying "how do you regulate gambling when there are illegal bookies and people can play for-cash poker at home?" The point is not to try to regulate everything, but to provide enough legitimate, regulated outlets to drown out the shady ones. There would have been a plethora of companies that are based in the US that would have signed on for US regulation. Even plenty of the offshore ones would have willingly done whatever the US govt wanted in order to get a piece of the pie.
Wow. Now that's a piece of technology that actually looks as cool or cooler as what the special effects teams rig up for any scifi pic.
Well, the original statement is clearly hyperbole. But consider that the total number of active duty military personnel is 1.4 million, I think 500k-750k dedicated terrorists already in the country could do some pretty devastating damage. You could pick the top 50 strategic targets and send 10k-15k terrorists to each. Imagine if they all had stockpiled military grade weapons and explosives. Considering the state of our military today, and considering the total SNAFU that Katrina was, how well do you think we'd be able to fend it off? Local law enforcement could only do so much against machine guns, grenades and RPGs.
Not that I think this scenario is likely. The more people you get in on a plan, the harder it becomes. The logistical nightmare of trying to organize and keep such a large plan secret would be almost insurmountable.
Right, I never said otherwise. Again, this is in response to the OP claiming the ban was because the gambling sites were unregulated. Just wanted to show that this was not the legitimate reason or illegitimate pretense used, as it would be easy to solve by providing regulation.
I think it's hard to tell from that sentence alone. It could be read as either saying MK was or was not hardcore.
You'll get no argument from me on any of that. I'm just trying to counter the claim that they outlawed them because they were unregulated.
I heard some of the congressional debate on this. Lot's of senators/reps going on and on about how internet gambling is way more addictive and people lose their house/job/family because it's so accessible. There may have been a lot of behind the scenes lobbying power, but up front most of the argument I heard was about keeping people from legitimately gambling away their lives.
But if the domain part of the URL was multilingual and the rest of the URL wasn't, it wouldn't be a "fully multilingual" URL, would it?
Read the parent comment to my original comment. I was commenting on the case he was describing.
Actually, I would think this would be WORSE than playing on a DS. The amount of distance to move your eyes/head from the touch screen to the tv and back and forth would be a pain. Only way I think it would work is if the TV was split screen and acted as both the top and bottom, with a floating cursor showing where your pen is on the handheld touchscreen. Even then it wouldn't be quite the same, I think. That's the problem with the DS, if you want to try to emulate it on the TV. I think it will also be a problem in the years ahead when the DS is gone and you want to go back and play the old titles with an emulator. Guess you'll have to hope we have the whole virtual reality thing down by then.
I'd settle for certain gameboy games getting redone as SuperNES-quality sidescrollers. Metroid II tops the list. I'd like to play a lot of them, but just wouldn't be able to put up with the graphics. Unfortunately, when these things get remade they tend to wind up no the newer Nintendo handheld. That was OK when it was the GBA, as I could use a gameboy player (did that for Metroid Zero Mission). But I wonder if I'll ever play DS games due to lack of a good way to play them on a TV.
On whatever grounds he used to jail them. That's the whole point of my question/comment.
Well, consider that judges can declare mistrials when juries break the rules in various ways (watch television, talk to the parties involved, etc.). And in this case, the judge apparently even jailed the jury. So I'm assuming he thought there was juror misconduct. And if you say the outcome of this case was the foundation for jury nullification, then there must not have already been jury nullification. So the jury could not claim they had a right to juror nullification from a previous precedent. If you run out of jurors (no more alternates), you can declare a mistrial. All of this just makes me wonder.
Interesting to hear the origins. Just curious, though - why didn't he declare a mistrial? I would have thought he would take at least one more crack at it with a different jury.
Well, you seem to have a pretty good crusade against me going. Far be it from me to stop you. Instead, I'll just finish my posting on this topic with two links:
http://slashdot.org/~illegalcortex
http://slashdot.org/~lwiniarski
I call your attention to the Score column on each. Considering your pitiful starting karma, it's even more sad that not a single one of your comments was thought to be worth even a point. On the other hand, plenty of mine have been modded up (including the ones you link to), one even to five.
So yeah, I'm going to have to go with the outside observers on this. Most of them see the same picture of you that I see, and it's not good.
Have fun with the thread.