Sure, let's treat everyone like criminals because the might do somthing bad. Hell, while we're at it let's put speed governers in everyone's car so nobody can drive too fast. Let's put in proximity sensors to force them to slow down if they are tailgating someone. Let's put in a system to shut off the engine if they run a red light. Let's mandate GPS transponders and surveillance devices in all vehicles so the government can track our every move.
You seem to forget that driving is NOT a right, but a mere privilege. So, it is perfetly okay to curtail the exercise of a privilege in order to preserve freedoms, like the freedom of walking home without risking being run over by a rogue driver.
It is possible now to view hidden objects by ultrasonic holography... I believe that this process has even been (gasp!) patented more than 25 years ago...
The object has to be at the bottom of a pool filled with some opaque liquid; a transducer is immersed, bathing the object with ultrasound. Sound waves reflect on the object, and they form an interference pattern on the surface, which is lit by coherent light, thus forming a virtual image of the object.
One caveat, though... Given the ***BIG*** difference of wavelength, the virtual image appears to be quite far, and has to be viewed with a telescope...
In my county, my wife and I are not allowed to cut each others' hair in the privacy of our own home.
(Just curious. Which country is that?)
A study revealed that electrocutions are higher where electricians need to be licensed. Why? because cheapskates who can't afford an expensive licensed electrician.
And that story reminds me that in my hometown, restaurants are not allowed to buy bread on mondays. Why? so the bakers won't be forced to work on sundays...
Professional accreditation organizations are there to guarantee a minimum level of competence for the accredited people qualified in their field. Do you really want a lawyer that doesn't have this minimum level of competence? A doctor? What about the civil engineers who design the buildings you live and work in?
How about a cook?
My grandfather won a medal during WW-II, for saving the life of 200 men.
He killed the cook.
The term "Joe Sixpack" is generally used to denote the average consumer or products/services/information. Now, I *do* know that I am, to a degree, a bit better informed compared to the average citizen about a range of issues. Does this make me a "better person"?
Think about it: every employee could end up needing two separate computers on their desk, one for the local network and one for the government one. That employee would have to be vigilant about not ever transferring files from one to the other, either by wire, wireless, or disc. If the employee needs to transfer an email, it'll have to be a hard copy or a retype. If any personnel have laptops, they can't be brought out onto the internet, and laptops from home can't be plugged into the network. For that matter, pretty much any kind of wireless networking is out since none of it can be trusted not to accidentally send or receive anything that wasn't supposed to be sent or received.
Not really. You simply use an encrypted VPN between the Internet/Dubyanet interface and the workstation.
Security could be implemented, say, with a one-time pad that is keyed to the workstation actual address (so if the key is stolen, it can't be used elsewhere to spy on the conversations).
1- Minitel is actually a long-term drag on France. As another poster in
this thread noted the backward condition of the telephone network worked to
France's advantage when it did upgrade during the "digital age".
Conversely Minitel is a drag on adoption of the internet and use of the French
language on it.
A technical drag, yes (it uses 20 year-old technology. Just try displaying
a GIF file on a Minitel!!!). But certainly not a social drag. Quite the opposite,
in fact. The french have got a 20 year headstart with the notion of John Q.
Public interacting with a computer network to get information or to make transactions.
2- There seems to be a consistent thread of anti-religious bias coming
from French posts. It appears there is an active antagonism being taught by
the French school system equating religion to ignorance. I would urge those
who have been indoctrinated in this way to throw their own blinders off. Religious
belief is not necessarily an impediment to rational thought, education, or
enlightenment. The comment that "Republican ideals naturally spurns religion
as something which enslaves humanity" smacks more of a Communist tract
or the Reign of Terror than anything truly Republican.
The first thing that religion does is brainwash it's proponents into believing
that they are free because of religion. It is no use then to demonstrate to
religious bigots that they aren't free because of the religion because they
have been brainwashed into believing otherwise.
Religion feeds on the morally weak; somebody who is well
educated in the ways of the world is far less likely to fall prey to the priests
than somebody who has no education at all.
Finally, all religion does is maintain a caste of useless
individuals who live off what they can sucker from their parishioners. Worse,
those suckerers attain quite an unwarranted position of influence upon the citizens,
and are therefore a dangerous impediment to the true, free exercice of Democracy.
3- The American university system rewards individual achivement as much
as any in the world. Scholarships are available from every institution and
the cream of the crop are recruited heavily to the top schools- which aren't
generally state sponsored schools by the way. If you're good enough you'll
not pay a dime and likely have a stipend as well. Yes, being a capitalistic
society a space is made for big donors- but those big donors make available
thousands of scholarships available to the best and the brightest.
Those scholarships are only attainable through a level of work that is quite
unattainable by many of those people who would seamlessly go through the french
State-financed system, or those who have rich daddies for that matter. And there
is the matter of the public school system which is unable to provide the motivation
needed of brighter students to seek further education.
By contrast, in France, schoolkids are sensitivized quite
early into the possibility in pursuing higher education.
4- Considering the constraints placed upon us by our relatively light
population density, I would say that America gets more bang for the taxpayer
dollar for government services than any country excepting Australia (which
is largely funded by taxing its natural resources). Our infrastructure is
highly dependend upon the policies of the local state and municipalities.
Many American cities have services that can favorably compare with any European
city.
Given the fact that the americans do not get State-paid medical services, and
that their system costs the same per capita as the canadian socialist medical
system, yet only insures 40% of the population, this statement above must be
the biggest joke since Groucho Marx said to a woman who had nine children adter
she said that she loves her husband very-much "Lady, I love my cigar,
but I take it out of my mouth once in a while!!!"...
Many non-americans are as myopic about us as we are about them. Those
of us from either group who have lived in both America and internationally
tend to have a balanced view of the whole thing. America *as a whole* and
*considering its unique geography and demographic challenges* has created
an unmatched and dynamic society that is the most technologically advanced,
economically powerful, and politically responsive in the world. Many other
countries can match or pass us in individual categories, especially those
with monocultures. I really, really wish that many Europeans would be happy
with their own successes and strengths and not need to demean America to make
themselves feel superior, it gets old, quick. Yes many American yahoos get
their jollies by baiting internationals, but please don't make it so easy
on them.
Many americans are quite myopic about themselves. America *as a whole* has
created quite a lopsided society where many people are left behind and have
to resort to crime just to survive, thanks to the absence of social services
that provide public security to the whole population of other countries. As
of political responsiveness, catering to big croporation whims by implementing
totally assinine foreign policies (by propping dictators, for example) is not
really a good way of being "politically responsive". Rather more like
"politically reactive".
Les amerloks sont les descendants directs des rosbifs, ze quouenne en moins.
Les rosbifs ont évolué sur une petite île très pauvre, sous une monarchie importée (pour la plupart) de France (bref, l'Angleterre est une colonie française qui a mal tourné)
(But I'm going to redo that in english, so more people can understand it)
So,
The americans are the direct offspring of the english, minus the queen.
The english have evolved on a small, poor island, under a monarchy (mostly) imported from France (in brief, England is a french colony that turned bad)... Very soon, when their natural ressources were depleted, they were forced to seek fortune overseas, hence the strong maritime and merchant traditions.
Starting with the Magna Carta of 1215 (where corrupt barons took advantage of a weak king), people gradually got the notion that they were more important than the state.
With the Industrial revolution, the rise of the power of the bourgeois, coupled with the notion that they, somehow, were "better" than the State yielded the then omnipresent sentiment that the State is bad and should be suspected.
It, however, did not apply to the bourgeois, hence the quasi-revered status of rich people, and the lack of suspicion given to overly powerful companies.
Since the fall of Communism, bourgeois arrogance (embodying their belief of their own superiority - after all, they "won" the cold war) has risen significantly, to the point of subverting national governments and suckering them into abdicating their sovereignty to unelected and unaccountable "international" bodies that solely sucker to big croporations.
How much of France's population is online to begin with? Even in this day, only about half of U.S. homes have internet. And most of that half are using AOL to begin with.
Far more than everywhere else in the world, thanks to the 20 year old Minitel network...
They were **THE** pionneers in instituting an online society. More than 20 years ago, they decided to implement the fabled Minitel in order to eliminate paper telephone directories.
They're not anglo-saxons.
So the french don't have that innate distrust of the State. Thus, they not only do not continually question what the State does, but they don't view working for the State as something demeaning, so the best minds are naturally attracted to work for the State so everyone benefits.
De Gaulle did not like using a phone.
He himself took maybe three phone calls a year, and made perhaps only one (on a good year) phone call on the same year (he didn't have a phone on his desk). Therefore, telephone infrastructure lagged sorely behind most countries (and was the butt of cruel jokes, like Fernand Raynaud's fabled: "Hello New-York, gimme the 22 at Asnières", which is said to have humiliated french telephone network engineers more than anything else. So, upon De Gaulle's resignation, the authorities embarked into a record-breaking research program to enhance the french phone network.
The retarded phone network was a blessing in disguise, because in most cases, switches simply bypassed mechanical switching and they went from manual operators straight to digital packet-switching.
This gave France a head-start in digital communications, which enabled them to quickly implement the Minitel network.
They're catholics
The french didn't have much choice but either to listen to the priests or to dump them, which is what they've been doing en masse for the last 200 years or so. (By contrast, a protestant can either find a sect that tells him what he likes, or simply make-up one of his own) Republican ideals naturally spurns religion as something which enslaves humanity, so the State is quite rigorously insulated from the church. Official education is strictly non-religious (law forbids teaching religion in public schools), so therefore, the french put much virtue in Science (and the fabled cartesian spirit also helps). So it is quite normal that the french will rigorously embrace new technology without having any philosophical qualms about it.
French culture values intellectual achievement
And it does so far more than financial success (you just can't get rid of the the old scatholic foundations...), so plenty of people are drawn into scientific studies. Scientists enjoy recognition and are respected. So, naturally, luddites do not really get listened to...
This enables a great penetration of advanced technological ideas throughout society.
The education system does not make specialists, but generalists.
French scientists have a shallower knowledge that spans far more areas of interests, so they are more able to connect seemingly disconnected technologies together.
A most successful and innovative american company has fully understood this idea. Researchers working for the Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing company are forced NOT to spend 10 to 15% of their research budget on their primary research area. But they are quite free to spend it investigating side-effects discovered through their research. That's why they have so much innovative products.
France values education and culture.
Since then, it is only natural that education is freely available to anyone. The cream of the crop is also enrolled in the grandes écoles where they are given the best education for free, for which they then serve the State as the fabled highly-competent senior bureaucrates.
French is not only about perfumes and good food, it's also about technology, science, research and, most importantly, FREE EDUCATION.
Legislation is not what we need to stop spammers. The real problem is that spammers actually make money off of spamming us. There are enough dumb people out there that actually buy crap from the spammers. Just quietly delete all of you spam, and when spammers stop making money then they will eventually stop. Or if you don't want spam, just don't use email.
This is precisely the kind of sheepish thinking spammers (or anyone who scams people by taking advantage of them) are counting on, and as long as there will be, profiteerers will have a jolly good time.
No, I can't get a larger one because it's an old laptop and I don't have money to buy another.
You oughta pimp yourself. One evening as a naked dancer in a gay bar will gross you more than enough to buy yourself a 10 times larger drive for your laptop.
Or if you can't get yourself to dance naked in front of drooling geezers, a few blowjobs administered to the same geezers in the john or the parking lot will do the trick.
The computer industry is still a new industry, and the market is still evolving its standards. It takes time to come up with a meaningful standard, and it doesn't help any that the technology is improving faster than the defacto standards can keep up.
A government solution in this area is the wrong way to go about. The government is not smart enough to insitute meaningful technological standards, and is not fast enough to keep up with the improving technology. I would love open standards for everything. But I am unwilling to make closed standards illegal. There are other solutions however.
Over 100 years ago, railroads were the hot high-tech business just like data-processing is right now.
Then, robber barons (J.P. Morgan, W.C. Vanderbilt, J. Gould and whatnot) built immense fortunes on swindling the masses and wrecking competitors, often leaving whole communities at the mercy of one transportation monopoly, whose wars against a competitor could wreck the economy of whole regions.
As a result, the US Federal Government stepped-in and imposed widespread controls, standards and financial activity controls, in order to insure that every community would get universal service, in effet, yielding a transportation level field.
And, in the long run, uniformized operating procedures along the different railroads yielded significant economy of scale.
(An interesting side-effect of government regulation was the fact that the massive statistical reporting and accounting required by the Government made the railroads early & heavy users of tabulating machinery, which was the direct ancestor of electronic data-processing).
...
Later, a unanimous decision yeilded on implementing open source specifications for strip searches with body cavity investigations. These would later be utilized at the convention.
COMDEX Security Marshals have decided to fully develope this open source concept and protocals.
This is so much pure provocation, it so sublime...
I mean, waving such a big red flag in front of the RIAA is bound to generate interesting times.
Now, let's see what happens when a progressive technological company takes a collision course with an obsolete industry based on artificial information scarcity...
What is unfortunate is that there is no New World for those of us who treasure our liberty to escape to--no safe haven from the ravages of our rapacious rulers.
Yes, there is a New World to escape to. It's called "outer-space".
Ever wonder why the States are doing their best to quash independent private efforts to go in Space? Because it knows very well that it will trigger an exodus of the best minds of the planet.
Slashdot Mirror
The object has to be at the bottom of a pool filled with some opaque liquid; a transducer is immersed, bathing the object with ultrasound. Sound waves reflect on the object, and they form an interference pattern on the surface, which is lit by coherent light, thus forming a virtual image of the object.
One caveat, though... Given the ***BIG*** difference of wavelength, the virtual image appears to be quite far, and has to be viewed with a telescope...
Don't worry, to force people to use their service, they'll make other ways illegal.
A study revealed that electrocutions are higher where electricians need to be licensed. Why? because cheapskates who can't afford an expensive licensed electrician.
And that story reminds me that in my hometown, restaurants are not allowed to buy bread on mondays. Why? so the bakers won't be forced to work on sundays...
He killed the cook.
Security could be implemented, say, with a one-time pad that is keyed to the workstation actual address (so if the key is stolen, it can't be used elsewhere to spy on the conversations).
A technical drag, yes (it uses 20 year-old technology. Just try displaying a GIF file on a Minitel!!!). But certainly not a social drag. Quite the opposite, in fact. The french have got a 20 year headstart with the notion of John Q. Public interacting with a computer network to get information or to make transactions.
The first thing that religion does is brainwash it's proponents into believing that they are free because of religion. It is no use then to demonstrate to religious bigots that they aren't free because of the religion because they have been brainwashed into believing otherwise.
Religion feeds on the morally weak; somebody who is well educated in the ways of the world is far less likely to fall prey to the priests than somebody who has no education at all.
Finally, all religion does is maintain a caste of useless individuals who live off what they can sucker from their parishioners. Worse, those suckerers attain quite an unwarranted position of influence upon the citizens, and are therefore a dangerous impediment to the true, free exercice of Democracy.
Those scholarships are only attainable through a level of work that is quite unattainable by many of those people who would seamlessly go through the french State-financed system, or those who have rich daddies for that matter. And there is the matter of the public school system which is unable to provide the motivation needed of brighter students to seek further education.
By contrast, in France, schoolkids are sensitivized quite early into the possibility in pursuing higher education.
Given the fact that the americans do not get State-paid medical services, and that their system costs the same per capita as the canadian socialist medical system, yet only insures 40% of the population, this statement above must be the biggest joke since Groucho Marx said to a woman who had nine children adter she said that she loves her husband very-much " Lady, I love my cigar, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while!!! "...
Many americans are quite myopic about themselves. America *as a whole* has created quite a lopsided society where many people are left behind and have to resort to crime just to survive, thanks to the absence of social services that provide public security to the whole population of other countries. As of political responsiveness, catering to big croporation whims by implementing totally assinine foreign policies (by propping dictators, for example) is not really a good way of being "politically responsive". Rather more like "politically reactive".
Les rosbifs ont évolué sur une petite île très pauvre, sous une monarchie importée (pour la plupart) de France (bref, l'Angleterre est une colonie française qui a mal tourné)
(But I'm going to redo that in english, so more people can understand it)
So,
The americans are the direct offspring of the english, minus the queen.
The english have evolved on a small, poor island, under a monarchy (mostly) imported from France (in brief, England is a french colony that turned bad)... Very soon, when their natural ressources were depleted, they were forced to seek fortune overseas, hence the strong maritime and merchant traditions.
Starting with the Magna Carta of 1215 (where corrupt barons took advantage of a weak king), people gradually got the notion that they were more important than the state.
With the Industrial revolution, the rise of the power of the bourgeois, coupled with the notion that they, somehow, were "better" than the State yielded the then omnipresent sentiment that the State is bad and should be suspected.
It, however, did not apply to the bourgeois, hence the quasi-revered status of rich people, and the lack of suspicion given to overly powerful companies.
Since the fall of Communism, bourgeois arrogance (embodying their belief of their own superiority - after all, they "won" the cold war) has risen significantly, to the point of subverting national governments and suckering them into abdicating their sovereignty to unelected and unaccountable "international" bodies that solely sucker to big croporations.
- They were **THE** pionneers in instituting an online society.
- They're not anglo-saxons.
- De Gaulle did not like using a phone.
- They're catholics
- French culture values intellectual achievement
- The education system does not make specialists, but generalists.
- France values education and culture.
French is not only about perfumes and good food, it's also about technology, science, research and, most importantly, FREE EDUCATION.More than 20 years ago, they decided to implement the fabled Minitel in order to eliminate paper telephone directories.
So the french don't have that innate distrust of the State. Thus, they not only do not continually question what the State does, but they don't view working for the State as something demeaning, so the best minds are naturally attracted to work for the State so everyone benefits.
He himself took maybe three phone calls a year, and made perhaps only one (on a good year) phone call on the same year (he didn't have a phone on his desk). Therefore, telephone infrastructure lagged sorely behind most countries (and was the butt of cruel jokes, like Fernand Raynaud's fabled: "Hello New-York, gimme the 22 at Asnières", which is said to have humiliated french telephone network engineers more than anything else. So, upon De Gaulle's resignation, the authorities embarked into a record-breaking research program to enhance the french phone network.
The retarded phone network was a blessing in disguise, because in most cases, switches simply bypassed mechanical switching and they went from manual operators straight to digital packet-switching.
This gave France a head-start in digital communications, which enabled them to quickly implement the Minitel network.
The french didn't have much choice but either to listen to the priests or to dump them, which is what they've been doing en masse for the last 200 years or so. (By contrast, a protestant can either find a sect that tells him what he likes, or simply make-up one of his own)
Republican ideals naturally spurns religion as something which enslaves humanity, so the State is quite rigorously insulated from the church. Official education is strictly non-religious (law forbids teaching religion in public schools), so therefore, the french put much virtue in Science (and the fabled cartesian spirit also helps). So it is quite normal that the french will rigorously embrace new technology without having any philosophical qualms about it.
And it does so far more than financial success (you just can't get rid of the the old scatholic foundations...), so plenty of people are drawn into scientific studies. Scientists enjoy recognition and are respected. So, naturally, luddites do not really get listened to...
This enables a great penetration of advanced technological ideas throughout society.
French scientists have a shallower knowledge that spans far more areas of interests, so they are more able to connect seemingly disconnected technologies together.
A most successful and innovative american company has fully understood this idea. Researchers working for the Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing company are forced NOT to spend 10 to 15% of their research budget on their primary research area. But they are quite free to spend it investigating side-effects discovered through their research. That's why they have so much innovative products.
Since then, it is only natural that education is freely available to anyone. The cream of the crop is also enrolled in the grandes écoles where they are given the best education for free, for which they then serve the State as the fabled highly-competent senior bureaucrates.
Blame Canada!!!!
Xbox is a virus, which seems can infect anything, even subway turnstiles...
Or if you can't get yourself to dance naked in front of drooling geezers, a few blowjobs administered to the same geezers in the john or the parking lot will do the trick.
And it has an added bonus, too: it forces you to stay healthy so you can keep wearing it.
And you also get babes to look at you...
Then, robber barons (J.P. Morgan, W.C. Vanderbilt, J. Gould and whatnot) built immense fortunes on swindling the masses and wrecking competitors, often leaving whole communities at the mercy of one transportation monopoly, whose wars against a competitor could wreck the economy of whole regions.
As a result, the US Federal Government stepped-in and imposed widespread controls, standards and financial activity controls, in order to insure that every community would get universal service, in effet, yielding a transportation level field.
And, in the long run, uniformized operating procedures along the different railroads yielded significant economy of scale.
(An interesting side-effect of government regulation was the fact that the massive statistical reporting and accounting required by the Government made the railroads early & heavy users of tabulating machinery, which was the direct ancestor of electronic data-processing).
I mean, waving such a big red flag in front of the RIAA is bound to generate interesting times.
Now, let's see what happens when a progressive technological company takes a collision course with an obsolete industry based on artificial information scarcity...
Ever wonder why the States are doing their best to quash independent private efforts to go in Space? Because it knows very well that it will trigger an exodus of the best minds of the planet.