Because 'they' are people. There are a few power-hungry morons who manage to keep them enslaved with terror and brainwashing, but I'm pretty sure you would find there a lot of nice and friendly young girls to whom you'd love to show how the Internet works;) Also, having Internet makes people happuy (well, it makes me happy), and happy people are usually pretty reluctant to go to war.
I think that the real long-term plan here is to minimize pat-down use to such a level, that later it can be abandoned altogether without much resistance from the flying public.
When they (you know, THEY) have been able to make us consider pat-downs as the less-humiliating option, I think they are safe to assume they'll eventually be able to force us to do anything...
OK, I'm from Slovakia, and not that I like our government (thieves all of them), but this thing is getting blown out of proportions (pun intended). What our (anti-government) media write, is that there were not 8 pieces per 90g, but just 2 per 10g. It was in the checked-in baggage, not the hand baggage. The baggage was checked by a dog, but it found only one piece, the second one got through. It is RDX, which - unless you have the right fuse - is as dangerous as a piece of chocolate. The pilot was apparently informed that he has a piece of explosive on board, but since it was a security exercise, and there are far more dangerous things on any plane (including the tons of fuel) he decided that it's not a problem, and took off with it. Slovak police have informed the Irish about the situation, but for some reason they forgot to remove the explosive, and then two days later when they got a second warning (just to be sure), they decided it'd be nice to do a follow-up test of their anti-terrorism and bomb sqads. I still don't understand how they want to account for arresting a man of whom they knew that he didn't do anything illegal. Since there's not much happening right now, the media is just happy to make a circus of it, and apparently the irish have decided that it may be beneficial for them to make a huge fuss of it (I'd really like to know the reason). Actually, this kind of test is pretty common all around the world, the explose-sniffing dogs need to find something quite frequently in order not to forget how to do it...
...to respond is to try to promote through this one (and possibly more) to a position high enough that you will be able to enforce your privacy and off-time. It's like with sharks - you either move or you die.
Your CPU uses 95W at its stock speed of 2.8GHZ, not at the overclocked speed of 3.4GHz. If you are willing and able, you could measure the difference and post it - I'd be interested to know the results. I'd expect it to be somewhere near the 150W mark...
...and I guess it's the same everywhere. In our (Slovakia) criminal code fraud is defined as when "somebody deceives somebody else, or uses their mistake to enrich himself". This is exactly what copyfraud is about, and it's punishable by jail time. Also, of course, since it's a criminal offense the aggrieved party is entitiled to compensation. This all has nothing to do with copyright laws, just plain criminal code...
Of course, and I'm not saying that UK government should issue an ID card to me. All I'm saying is that we use ID cards without it being any problem, and that it's quite useful, since I can prove my identity in a number of places using just this one card - and this is backed by law. However, I also think that having a central registry of biometric data is a very bad idea. Anyone with basic understanding of cryptography can think of a simple and usable scheme which can be used to prove (using biometrics) a person's identity, without providing for a potential identity theft disaster.
Answer to you question is quite obvious - because certain actions can be allowed to be performed only by authorised persons (like bank account handling, for example). And I didn't get what has the Treaty of Rome to do with this issue, it being of economical nature. Besides, I went to UK twice this year, and both times had to provide my ID card and endure being photographed at the airport for a provisional biometric ID (which was used only at the airport). UK is not part of the Schengen Agreement so nobody can travel to UK and back without being identified at the border.
I live in a post-com country, and we've had identity cards forever. No fingerprins, just photograph, name, and other details. It also has some security features to make forging difficult (but not impossible; unfortunately there's no digital signature for the ID card so far). You can have a look at some examples at http://www.minv.sk/?vzory-dokladov-obcianske-preukazy I can't imagine to live without one. How do you prove your identity without it in a bank, or when you need something from some office (for example new driver's license), etc?
Where I come from, any contract binding an elected representative to vote in a certain manner would violate the constitution, and thus be invalid from the start. Once a person is elected into the office, he/she can vote however he/she sees fit, and nobody can influence the vote (except $$$ of course;). Also, it doesn't matter WHY the person has been elected, whether there was an invalid "contract" in the play - the person becomes a legally elected representative for full 4 years.
Well, apart from the benefit of confirming that we aren't alone, the others are mostly hopeful speculation. But there is one another pretty certain benefit, should SETI confirm that we are not alone - imagine all the new technologies our hi-tech and totally paranoid military would invent, if they are confronted with the possibility that there is someone who may have better weapons. They may even cut funding some not-so-successful wars to be able to get the money for research:-)
I use IBM T60 with built-in fingerprint scanner (the swipe-your-finger type), and it works just fine, I can login in one second, no need to type anything. I imagine that these things can be also attached to standard desktop PCs. For fast logout, just place a big "LOGOUT" icon on the desktop, and have it start the logout command (I forgot what to type, but there is something like this). Windows can log anything in its Event Log, login/logout too. The only downside is that the user has to register his/her fingerprints in the system, and he/she actually has to have a little patience to learn how to swipe the finger properly (maybe other types of scanners are more foolproof, but the one I know is a bit picky about the way you place and drag your finger).
Slashdot Mirror
I love Willis' works, but Blackout was boring and the characters weren't very believable, behaving all like morons just for the plot's sake...
Because 'they' are people. There are a few power-hungry morons who manage to keep them enslaved with terror and brainwashing, but I'm pretty sure you would find there a lot of nice and friendly young girls to whom you'd love to show how the Internet works ;) Also, having Internet makes people happuy (well, it makes me happy), and happy people are usually pretty reluctant to go to war.
...but in their hearts, they soar high above the clouds.
...and if the nature doesn't supply any, we still have the lawyers :)
Well, the Swedish bikini team doesn't look so hot now, does it?
I think that the real long-term plan here is to minimize pat-down use to such a level, that later it can be abandoned altogether without much resistance from the flying public. When they (you know, THEY) have been able to make us consider pat-downs as the less-humiliating option, I think they are safe to assume they'll eventually be able to force us to do anything...
...than the fact that currently we don't have a way to get there is the fact that now we have the reason to find the way.
OK, I'm from Slovakia, and not that I like our government (thieves all of them), but this thing is getting blown out of proportions (pun intended). What our (anti-government) media write, is that there were not 8 pieces per 90g, but just 2 per 10g. It was in the checked-in baggage, not the hand baggage. The baggage was checked by a dog, but it found only one piece, the second one got through. It is RDX, which - unless you have the right fuse - is as dangerous as a piece of chocolate. The pilot was apparently informed that he has a piece of explosive on board, but since it was a security exercise, and there are far more dangerous things on any plane (including the tons of fuel) he decided that it's not a problem, and took off with it. Slovak police have informed the Irish about the situation, but for some reason they forgot to remove the explosive, and then two days later when they got a second warning (just to be sure), they decided it'd be nice to do a follow-up test of their anti-terrorism and bomb sqads. I still don't understand how they want to account for arresting a man of whom they knew that he didn't do anything illegal. Since there's not much happening right now, the media is just happy to make a circus of it, and apparently the irish have decided that it may be beneficial for them to make a huge fuss of it (I'd really like to know the reason). Actually, this kind of test is pretty common all around the world, the explose-sniffing dogs need to find something quite frequently in order not to forget how to do it...
...to respond is to try to promote through this one (and possibly more) to a position high enough that you will be able to enforce your privacy and off-time. It's like with sharks - you either move or you die.
Your CPU uses 95W at its stock speed of 2.8GHZ, not at the overclocked speed of 3.4GHz. If you are willing and able, you could measure the difference and post it - I'd be interested to know the results. I'd expect it to be somewhere near the 150W mark...
...and I guess it's the same everywhere. In our (Slovakia) criminal code fraud is defined as when "somebody deceives somebody else, or uses their mistake to enrich himself". This is exactly what copyfraud is about, and it's punishable by jail time. Also, of course, since it's a criminal offense the aggrieved party is entitiled to compensation. This all has nothing to do with copyright laws, just plain criminal code...
You just beat me to this proposal :)
...welcome our new YouTube watching overlords!
Of course, and I'm not saying that UK government should issue an ID card to me. All I'm saying is that we use ID cards without it being any problem, and that it's quite useful, since I can prove my identity in a number of places using just this one card - and this is backed by law. However, I also think that having a central registry of biometric data is a very bad idea. Anyone with basic understanding of cryptography can think of a simple and usable scheme which can be used to prove (using biometrics) a person's identity, without providing for a potential identity theft disaster.
Answer to you question is quite obvious - because certain actions can be allowed to be performed only by authorised persons (like bank account handling, for example). And I didn't get what has the Treaty of Rome to do with this issue, it being of economical nature. Besides, I went to UK twice this year, and both times had to provide my ID card and endure being photographed at the airport for a provisional biometric ID (which was used only at the airport). UK is not part of the Schengen Agreement so nobody can travel to UK and back without being identified at the border.
I live in a post-com country, and we've had identity cards forever. No fingerprins, just photograph, name, and other details. It also has some security features to make forging difficult (but not impossible; unfortunately there's no digital signature for the ID card so far). You can have a look at some examples at http://www.minv.sk/?vzory-dokladov-obcianske-preukazy I can't imagine to live without one. How do you prove your identity without it in a bank, or when you need something from some office (for example new driver's license), etc?
Where I come from, any contract binding an elected representative to vote in a certain manner would violate the constitution, and thus be invalid from the start. Once a person is elected into the office, he/she can vote however he/she sees fit, and nobody can influence the vote (except $$$ of course ;). Also, it doesn't matter WHY the person has been elected, whether there was an invalid "contract" in the play - the person becomes a legally elected representative for full 4 years.
Well, apart from the benefit of confirming that we aren't alone, the others are mostly hopeful speculation. But there is one another pretty certain benefit, should SETI confirm that we are not alone - imagine all the new technologies our hi-tech and totally paranoid military would invent, if they are confronted with the possibility that there is someone who may have better weapons. They may even cut funding some not-so-successful wars to be able to get the money for research :-)
...so long, piratebay, and thanks for all the torrents...
I use IBM T60 with built-in fingerprint scanner (the swipe-your-finger type), and it works just fine, I can login in one second, no need to type anything. I imagine that these things can be also attached to standard desktop PCs. For fast logout, just place a big "LOGOUT" icon on the desktop, and have it start the logout command (I forgot what to type, but there is something like this). Windows can log anything in its Event Log, login/logout too. The only downside is that the user has to register his/her fingerprints in the system, and he/she actually has to have a little patience to learn how to swipe the finger properly (maybe other types of scanners are more foolproof, but the one I know is a bit picky about the way you place and drag your finger).