yup. I had a serious WTF moment at that question as well. Likewise for Q1 and Q2.
Apparently this is quite normal that a question like this is included in GCSE exams. Look at the Campaign for Real Education website as they have a few examples. http://www.cre.org.uk/.
Their comparison of maths exams though the ages is quite illumination. Apparently a lot of current A level questions uses to be O level questions.
1. multiple choice questions are proving popular for one reasons only - they can be marked by computer and are quicker and cheaper to process because of this.
2. unless you think that people are getting a lot more intelligent in a couple of generations then you must assume that either (a) the exams are easier or (b) that students are being thought only how to pass exams (this is the view held by several teacher friends of mine)
3. my first university course (which was a 3 year course in the late 80s) is now a 4 year course - this additional year is used as a remedial course to get students back up to the level they used to be at. universities certainly do not believe that more students are doing much better then they ever have previously.
4. schools are busy reducing the number of students doing maths (and further maths), chemistry and physics as much as possible as in general students get lower grades - in turn this lowers the performance of the school as a whole in the league tables. in other words it is hard to get people to do their jobs properly when their wages rely on them doing it badly.
5. employers have also been lamenting the quality of school leavers in many subjects - maths, spelling, english.
its a pretty dismal state of affairs in the UK, and it seems to be repeating itself in the EU and in the colonies.
i think much of the blame must be placed squarely on the shoulders of the government who seem to delight in meddling in the schools at every opportunity. with the international baccalaureates being introduced soon who knows what will happen next?
they did not know what he was being investigated for?
I think not.
Beijing State Security Bureau
Notice of Evidence Collection
[2004] BJ State Sec. Ev. Coll. No. 02
Beijing Representative Office, Yahoo! (HK) Holdings Ltd.:
According to investigation, your office is in possession of the following
items relating to a case of suspecting illegal provision of state secrets to foreign
entities that is currently under investigation by our bureau. In accordance with
Article 45 of the Criminal Procedure Law of the PRC, [these items] may be
collected.
The items for collection are:
Email account registration information for huoyan1989@yahoo.com.cn, all
login times, corresponding IP addresses, and relevant email content from February
22, 2004 to present.
Beijing State Security Bureau (seal)
April 22, 2004
And even if it is local law, that does not make it the right thing to do. Even then they should of been more upfront to congress when asked about it. Shi Tao will be in jail until 2014 and thats no laughing matter.
of course, the MS tactic is to get OOXML recognized and then default to it across the windows suite.
but as I remember they have tried this was a number of formats before - but once a file format is recognized as a de-facto standard (MP3, HTML, JPG) they are notoriously hard to shift.
irrelevant as it may be its still a damn depressing indication of the way business is done and sensible, rational decisions are perverted to line company pockets. this sort of thing annoys me.
You got me thinking what would happen if some aliens saw other Sci-Fi films and made them real.
For example:
Alien? Then manufacture a 7ft killing machine of an alien.
Babylon5. I think that would be kind of cool.
'Trek, best not to go there. Galaxy Quest got there first.
But what would they make of 2001, A Scanner Darkly, Solaris or ET? I find the idea of making the ship from ET somehow ridiculous. The old classic Cygnus from "The Black Hole" would be most excellent - I always like that. Of course, if they made an "authentic" Millennium Falcon it would be constantly falling apart when you needed it the most.
Hey ho, better get back to doing some work... zzz.
Seems like word gets around, already the book reviews are flooding in....my word, he has really not done himself any favors here - I sense another internet laughing stock in the making.
I do not own this book. I do not propose to read it. My "rating" is based solely upon the fact that the author has chosen to sue a reviewer for "Injury - Assault, Libel, and Slander", because he didn't like the review. (Unlike the author, the reviewer is a professional biology professor who actually understands this subject.) No reputable scientist would react in this way - indeed the whole point of science is to prove things wrong! (As Richard Feynman wrote, "We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.") So caveat emptor...
A 164 page book for $60?
And from an author without any doctorate in the sciences he purports to write about? With a non-peer-reviewed 'theory'?
Don't waste your money.
The reviewer above wrote everything I intended to, but I just thought I would add my voice here. By sueing a critic of his theories, the author of this book threw away any claim he might have had to any kind of scientific credibility. A scientist might argue with his critics, but the fact that this author has instigated a lawsuit against someone for criticizing his theories suggests to me that even he is aware that said theories have no merits to argue.
many brilliant men have been called crackpots by their contemporaries but have ended up being exonerated by history.
however, on examination of the links from the article, this man looks like a crackpot with a capital C.
my fave quote from TFA: "To Mr Pivar, I would suggest a simple rule. Theories are supposed to explain observation and experiment. You don't come up with a theory first, and then invent the evidence to support it."
Could this be audio fingerprinting - where the audio is examined for a signature derived from the audio samples themselves and then compared against a database of tracks? this system has been mooted as a "perfect DRM" vehicle as is does not matter what audio compression, or file format is used as the audio itself is used to generate a fingerprint license checking.
I could imagine this would come at quite a hit in terms of processor bandwidth and hence slowing down the whole system.
Of course I would expect this would be visible in Task Manager, I would be tempted to check myself except that I do not (and do not intend to) use Vista.
but Novell deserve praise for taking on the fight with SCO....
whilst they deserve a slap for entering into a pact with the devil?
Re:I have no problem with this kind of thing
on
Manhattan 1984
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I really don't get it.
Its a tool, like any other tool it throws up a number of false positives, to use it properly is to then screen the positives eliminating them one by one.
- this man has an alibi
- this man died last week
- this man was pictured on CCTV (!) somewhere else
- this man's DNA was found on scene, new the victim, blood on his clothing, he has motive, refuses to disclose his movements and recently washed his car seat. lets investigate him a bit more. A DNA match does not mean his is guilty, but he might not of been located without one.
Nowhere did I suggest that you say "this man was found on the scene of the crime, therefore by laws of probability you must be guilty" that would be insane. Neither does the home office in the UK. But the database has an uncanny track history of providing the clues to solve crimes, some even ~30 years old.
For every crime scene you would no doubt flag up a number of people who could then be interviewed to determine if they are worth following up as with witness, perp or non-connected to the crime.
Its a bloody tool. It is not a smoking gun. Much like witness statements, number plates, CCTV, resturant bill, credit cards and any other traditional detective method - why, oh why, does this one subject raise such foaming at the mouth objections and irrational thought?
In the UK, in 2001 they changed the law so that if you were even cautioned then they could keep your DNA and add it to their database of 5% of the population. There was an outcry, but since then 200,000 samples have been added and 8,000 matches have been made to 14,000 crimes. Thats 1 in 25 people cautioned for an offense linked to outstanding unsolved crime. Also it is generating 45,000 matches a year to crime scenes. That is why there is a database - because as a tool it bloody works.
Re:I have no problem with this kind of thing
on
Manhattan 1984
·
· Score: 1
Interesting read, many thanks - but irrelevant to this discussion. We are NOT talking about ubiquitous surveillance everywhere. We are talking about surveillance in public places and DNA checking from collected samples to a centrally held database. Privacy in people homes is still guaranteed except when a warrant has been issued - in that respect nothing has changed.
The proposed systems are nothing more then a tool to help solve crimes - they do not watch your every move in the privacy of your own home as the parents link would suggest. I really do not understand why this one subject raises so many hackles.
The best point in the article is the Cardinal Richelieu point - but even then I don't believe it. Thats why we have trial by Jury and an appeal system. Besides, there have miscarriages of justice ever since there was a justice system - why would a new tool increase that?
"Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." Watch someone long enough, and you'll find something to arrest -- or just blackmail -- with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies -- whoever they happen to be at the time."
Re:I have no problem with this kind of thing
on
Manhattan 1984
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Actually there is a lot of sense to that. It has been proposed before that a government DNA database would virtually solve crime - obviously this is not true but it would be a very useful tool for detection and prevention.
But before you go off on one and start ranting lets look at the facts...
"Any intrusion on personal privacy is proportionate to the benefits that are gained.
By the end of 2005, about 200,000 samples had been retained that would have been destroyed before the 2001 change in legislation. 8,000 of these samples matched with DNA taken from crime scenes, involving nearly 14,000 offences, including murders and rapes.
In 2005-06 45,000 crimes were matched against records on the DNA Database; including 422 homicides (murders and manslaughters) and 645 rapes."
Thats 45 thousand crimes in one year. Think about that for a while.
"Errors and false DNA matches have led to miscarriages of justice, and these can create major difficulties for those wrongfully convicted because, like fingerprint evidence, DNA is widely regarded as absolutely conclusive, meaning that those without strong alibi evidence will tend to be presumed guilty. At the moment the DNA database itself can be viewed largely (but not entirely) as a growing suspect list that is mainly used to check samples from new and unsolved crime, but the existing data can be (and has been) used for broader purposes, and the UK practice of retaining the sample as well as the data allows it to be used for further testing for other purposes as the science develops.
We're seeing glimpses of what is possible with familial testing, which establishes links to family members where the suspect's DNA might not be on the database, and although the first instance of this was viewed as a coup, if used widely the procedure would find relatives you didn't know about, and reveal that people weren't related to the people they thought they were. So what have you got to hide? You don't know, and maybe you don't want to know."
---
I am *not* parroting a government line. Nor am I proposing GATACCA. I am simply stating that to dismiss this without thought on quaint and paranoid lines seems irrational and foolish. I realized that this viewpoint would run counter to many of the/. readers (yes thats a sweeping generalization) but it really is what I think.
Re:I have no problem with this kind of thing
on
Manhattan 1984
·
· Score: 0, Troll
Rubbish.
The fact you purchased a gift for your mother would hardly be picked up by automatic number plates would it? It would be picked up by a check on your credit card history, but then police have been able to do that for years. The fact is that they only do that if they have suspicion on the their part of a misdemeaner on your part. And that is how the system works - when there is suspicion then the police data mine the CCTV, card, number plates, phone records, DNA and other databases to generate, support or disprove a hypothesis about the crime itself.
To imply that the police will be watching you smacks of conspiracy theory and paranoia - go put your tinfoil coated aardvark hat back on you wierdo.
There will alway be specific isolated incidents of abuse to the system - that is inherent in a blanket coverage system controlled by fallible being subject to the whims of human nature - but the simple fact is that the system works on a more general system. And it definitely solves and discourages crime. In that respect I am all for it and I will continue to deride the nutters who think that the government is watching their every move.
I have no problem with this kind of thing
on
Manhattan 1984
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I find that most people who reject number plate tracking, CCTV cameras, automatic logging and vehicle license MOT test (legal UK vehicle check to ensure it is road worthy) and the like generally have something to hide.
Whilst I agree there must be safeguards, it seems that every day there are crimes solved, prevented or swiftly responded to by this kind of technology.
from the FA above: "Claims that they reduce or deter crime have not been clearly borne out by independent studies[2], though the government claims that when properly used they do result in deterrence, rather than displacement. One clear effect that has been noted is a reduction of car crime when used in car parks. Cameras have also been installed in taxis to deter violence against drivers, and also in mobile police surveillance vans. In some cases CCTV cameras have become a target of attacks themselves. Middlesbrough council have recently installed "Talking CCTV" cameras in their busy town-centre. It is a system pioneered in Wiltshire which allows CCTV operators to communicate directly with the offenders they spot. This idea is first known to have appeared in George Orwell's famous novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
The use of CCTV in the United States is less common, though increasing, and generally meets stronger opposition. In 1998 3,000 CCTV systems were found in New York City. There are 2,200 CCTV systems in Chicago.
The most measurable effect of CCTV is not on crime prevention, but on detection and prosecution. Several notable murder cases have been solved with the use of CCTV evidence, notably the Jamie Bulger case, and catching David Copeland, the Soho nail bomber. The use of CCTV to track the movements of missing children is now routine.
After the bombings of London on 7 July 2005, CCTV footage was used to identify the bombers. The media was surprised that few tube trains actually had CCTV cameras, and there were some calls for this to be increased.
On July 22, 2005, Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead by police at Stockwell tube station. CCTV footage has debunked some police claims. Because of the follow-up bombing attempts the previous day, some of the tapes had been supposedly removed from CCTV cameras for study, and they were not functional. The use of DVR technology may solve this problem."
In the UK the police are building up a large DNA database from everybody charged with a criminal offence (now nearly 5m entries) this solves crimes regularly. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3232744.stm as an example.
Bottom line, I have no problem with this technology if safeguards are in place and it makes the streets a safer place to walk.
I mean like 'em or hate 'em thats one firm with awfully deep pockets and the ownership seems to be settled now. Please, please tell me that I have missed something and I am being naive.
I spent alot of time in China working in the CE industry and this does not suprise me at all. The local culture is that to copy and improve is natural and not illegal.
However that had not stopped Chinese firms using our own IP systems against us by patenting just about everything they can get their hands on and then seeking money via the courts.
In a very real sense, they are having their cake and eating it as well.
My favorite story was the fake NEC firm and thats also mentioned in TFA:"In 2006, NEC, one of the 25 biggest consumer-electronics firms in the world, went public with the results of a two-year investigation. The company had been receiving complants about products it didn't even make: DVD players, cellphones, MP3 players. Investigators from International Risk, a private security firm employed by NEC, ultimately uncovered a shadow version of the company operating out of corporate offices in China, with ties to more than 50 manufacturing facilities. "On the surface, it looked like a series of intellectual-property infringements, but in reality a highly organized group has attempted to hijack the entire brand," says Steve Vickers, the former Hong Kong police inspector who was in charge of the investigation for International Risk. Executives had their own NEC business cards and e-mail add-resses. They had marketing plans and distribution networks in place. Some "company" facilities even had electronic signs bearing huge, lighted NEC logos. Most bold of all, the bogus NEC actually charged the manufacturers it worked with royalties on its designs. The investigation led to raids last year on 18 of the manufacturing sites and the seizure of nearly 50,000 fake products. Yet the factories themselves are still operating, just not using the NEC name. The ringleaders of the scam have yet to be caught; like the Samsung copiers, they are thought to still be making fakes."
I suspect the biggest problem was trying to persuade them that they had been breaking the law in the first place.
Most all of today's hydrogen is produced using fossil energy resources.[20] While some advocate hydrogen produced from non-fossil resources, there could be public resistance or technological barriers to the implementation of such methods. For example, the United States Department of Energy currently supports research and development aimed at producing hydrogen utilizing heat from generation IV reactors. Such nuclear power plants could be configured to cogenerate hydrogen and electricity. Hydrogen produced in this fashion would still incur the costs associated with transportation and compression or liquefaction assuming direct (molecular) hydrogen is the on-board fuel. Recently, alternative methods of creating hydrogen directly from sunlight and water through a metallic catalyst have been announced. This may eventually provide an economical, direct conversion of solar energy into hydrogen, a very clean solution for hydrogen production.
Some in Washington advocate schemes[22] other than hydrogen vehicles to replace the petroleum-based internal combustion engine vehicles. Plug-in hydrids, for example, would augment today's hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles with greater battery capacity to enable increased use of the vehicle's electric traction motor and reduced reliance on the combustion engine. The batteries would be charged via the electric grid when the vehicle is parked. Electric power transmission is about 95 percent efficient and the infrastructure is already in place (though substantial grid expansion would be needed if a sizeable fleet of plug-in hybrids were to be deployed.) Tackling the current drawbacks of electric cars or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles is believed by some to be easier than developing a whole new hydrogen infrastructure that mimics the obsolete model of oil distribution. Thermodynamically, a plug-in hybrid transportation system would face the same thermodynamic hurdles as would a system of hydrogen vehicles relying on electrolysis for its molecular hydrogen. The current electric grid, which is dominated by fossil energy resources in the United States, has a fuel-to-power efficiency of roughly 40 percent. Both the plug-in hybrids and the electrolytic hydrogen system would be subject to these comparative inefficiencies.
Hydrogen infrastructure
In order to distribute hydrogen to cars, the current gasoline fueling system would need to be replaced, or at least significantly supplemented with hydrogen fuel stations. Hydrogen stations are being built in various places around the world. Private and state initiatives like California's "California Hydrogen Highway" are already starting the infrastructure transition in advance of any manufacturers mass producing hydrogen cars. Replacement of the existing extensive gasoline fuel station infrastructure would cost a half trillion U.S. dollars in the United States alone.
note: this is the EV1 argument from "who killed the electric car". Because a hydrogen cell powered vehicle would mandate an engine with many replaceable parts and a company owned refueling infrastructure it would allow control and money making for the large oil corporations who killed the electric car mandate and promote hydrogen vehicles. It is simply not in their best interests to allow the consumers to get vehicles with a low maintenance cost and which they can refuel from multiple sources which make the companies little or no money.
Hydrogen production cost
Molecular hydrogen can be derived chemically from a feed stock such as methanol but can also be produced from water. Current technologies utilize between 25 to 50 percent of the higher heating value to produce
Personalized advertising just jumped out of the cookie jar (no, get your mind off the choc chips lardy, I'm talking browsers here) and into the real world. Somehow the idea of large corporations tracking me makes me feel a great unease, we can trust them to value money over common decency and politeness.
Slashdot Mirror
hmm.
if they wanted to hurt MS then they should of added a zero to that sum.
or should it to be 2 zeros?
gigaflops, schmigaglops.
/.
this is
i thought performance was measured in fps?
One can only hope that enough publicity to the "irregularities" will force the votes to be better controlled and conducted in the future.
Yes MS got the Swedish vote - but I think they will find it to be a Phyrric victory.
yup. I had a serious WTF moment at that question as well. Likewise for Q1 and Q2.
Apparently this is quite normal that a question like this is included in GCSE exams. Look at the Campaign for Real Education website as they have a few examples. http://www.cre.org.uk/.
Their comparison of maths exams though the ages is quite illumination. Apparently a lot of current A level questions uses to be O level questions.
I refer you to the campaign for real education at http://www.cre.org.uk/.
A lot of concerned parents and education professionals. Their website is a mine of information and comparisons on this subject.
All the information you could want and only a click away.
see the physics GCSE paper here: http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/pdfs/exampaper.pdf
several comments (and food for thought):
1. multiple choice questions are proving popular for one reasons only - they can be marked by computer and are quicker and cheaper to process because of this.
2. unless you think that people are getting a lot more intelligent in a couple of generations then you must assume that either (a) the exams are easier or (b) that students are being thought only how to pass exams (this is the view held by several teacher friends of mine)
3. my first university course (which was a 3 year course in the late 80s) is now a 4 year course - this additional year is used as a remedial course to get students back up to the level they used to be at. universities certainly do not believe that more students are doing much better then they ever have previously.
4. schools are busy reducing the number of students doing maths (and further maths), chemistry and physics as much as possible as in general students get lower grades - in turn this lowers the performance of the school as a whole in the league tables. in other words it is hard to get people to do their jobs properly when their wages rely on them doing it badly.
5. employers have also been lamenting the quality of school leavers in many subjects - maths, spelling, english.
its a pretty dismal state of affairs in the UK, and it seems to be repeating itself in the EU and in the colonies.
i think much of the blame must be placed squarely on the shoulders of the government who seem to delight in meddling in the schools at every opportunity. with the international baccalaureates being introduced soon who knows what will happen next?
they did not know what he was being investigated for?
n ese-dissident-e-mails-what-did-yahoo-know-and-when -did-it-know-it.html f
I think not.
Beijing State Security Bureau
Notice of Evidence Collection
[2004] BJ State Sec. Ev. Coll. No. 02
Beijing Representative Office, Yahoo! (HK) Holdings Ltd.:
According to investigation, your office is in possession of the following items relating to a case of suspecting illegal provision of state secrets to foreign entities that is currently under investigation by our bureau. In accordance with Article 45 of the Criminal Procedure Law of the PRC, [these items] may be collected.
The items for collection are:
Email account registration information for huoyan1989@yahoo.com.cn, all login times, corresponding IP addresses, and relevant email content from February 22, 2004 to present.
Beijing State Security Bureau (seal)
April 22, 2004
see:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070730-chi
http://www.duihua.org/press/news/070725_ShiTao.pd
And even if it is local law, that does not make it the right thing to do. Even then they should of been more upfront to congress when asked about it. Shi Tao will be in jail until 2014 and thats no laughing matter.
lol! Apologies, I clarify. de-facto standard for open xml based documents.
:)
sorry 'bout that.
irrelevant in a way because ODF looks to be fast becoming a de-facto standard regardless. out numbering OOXML something in the order of 250 to 1.
a ll-ooxml-documents.html 7 0813-1201
see:
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/05/so-where-are-
http://www.geniisoft.com/showcase.nsf/archive/200
of course, the MS tactic is to get OOXML recognized and then default to it across the windows suite.
but as I remember they have tried this was a number of formats before - but once a file format is recognized as a de-facto standard (MP3, HTML, JPG) they are notoriously hard to shift.
irrelevant as it may be its still a damn depressing indication of the way business is done and sensible, rational decisions are perverted to line company pockets. this sort of thing annoys me.
You mean "Galaxy Quest" style?
You got me thinking what would happen if some aliens saw other Sci-Fi films and made them real.
For example:
Alien? Then manufacture a 7ft killing machine of an alien.
Babylon5. I think that would be kind of cool.
'Trek, best not to go there. Galaxy Quest got there first.
But what would they make of 2001, A Scanner Darkly, Solaris or ET? I find the idea of making the ship from ET somehow ridiculous. The old classic Cygnus from "The Black Hole" would be most excellent - I always like that. Of course, if they made an "authentic" Millennium Falcon it would be constantly falling apart when you needed it the most.
Hey ho, better get back to doing some work... zzz.
Seems like word gets around, already the book reviews are flooding in....my word, he has really not done himself any favors here - I sense another internet laughing stock in the making.
S elf-Organization/dp/0976406004
from: http://www.amazon.com/LifeCode-Theory-Biological-
I do not own this book. I do not propose to read it. My "rating" is based solely upon the fact that the author has chosen to sue a reviewer for "Injury - Assault, Libel, and Slander", because he didn't like the review. (Unlike the author, the reviewer is a professional biology professor who actually understands this subject.) No reputable scientist would react in this way - indeed the whole point of science is to prove things wrong! (As Richard Feynman wrote, "We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.") So caveat emptor...
A 164 page book for $60?
And from an author without any doctorate in the sciences he purports to write about? With a non-peer-reviewed 'theory'?
Don't waste your money.
The reviewer above wrote everything I intended to, but I just thought I would add my voice here. By sueing a critic of his theories, the author of this book threw away any claim he might have had to any kind of scientific credibility. A scientist might argue with his critics, but the fact that this author has instigated a lawsuit against someone for criticizing his theories suggests to me that even he is aware that said theories have no merits to argue.
many brilliant men have been called crackpots by their contemporaries but have ended up being exonerated by history.
however, on examination of the links from the article, this man looks like a crackpot with a capital C.
my fave quote from TFA: "To Mr Pivar, I would suggest a simple rule. Theories are supposed to explain observation and experiment. You don't come up with a theory first, and then invent the evidence to support it."
Could this be audio fingerprinting - where the audio is examined for a signature derived from the audio samples themselves and then compared against a database of tracks? this system has been mooted as a "perfect DRM" vehicle as is does not matter what audio compression, or file format is used as the audio itself is used to generate a fingerprint license checking.
p rinting
I can find a reference for video fingerprinting which quite explains things more eloquently then me : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_video_finger
I could imagine this would come at quite a hit in terms of processor bandwidth and hence slowing down the whole system.
Of course I would expect this would be visible in Task Manager, I would be tempted to check myself except that I do not (and do not intend to) use Vista.
but Novell deserve praise for taking on the fight with SCO....
whilst they deserve a slap for entering into a pact with the devil?
I really don't get it.
Its a tool, like any other tool it throws up a number of false positives, to use it properly is to then screen the positives eliminating them one by one.
- this man has an alibi
- this man died last week
- this man was pictured on CCTV (!) somewhere else
- this man's DNA was found on scene, new the victim, blood on his clothing, he has motive, refuses to disclose his movements and recently washed his car seat. lets investigate him a bit more. A DNA match does not mean his is guilty, but he might not of been located without one.
Nowhere did I suggest that you say "this man was found on the scene of the crime, therefore by laws of probability you must be guilty" that would be insane. Neither does the home office in the UK. But the database has an uncanny track history of providing the clues to solve crimes, some even ~30 years old.
For every crime scene you would no doubt flag up a number of people who could then be interviewed to determine if they are worth following up as with witness, perp or non-connected to the crime.
Its a bloody tool. It is not a smoking gun. Much like witness statements, number plates, CCTV, resturant bill, credit cards and any other traditional detective method - why, oh why, does this one subject raise such foaming at the mouth objections and irrational thought?
In the UK, in 2001 they changed the law so that if you were even cautioned then they could keep your DNA and add it to their database of 5% of the population. There was an outcry, but since then 200,000 samples have been added and 8,000 matches have been made to 14,000 crimes. Thats 1 in 25 people cautioned for an offense linked to outstanding unsolved crime. Also it is generating 45,000 matches a year to crime scenes. That is why there is a database - because as a tool it bloody works.
Interesting read, many thanks - but irrelevant to this discussion. We are NOT talking about ubiquitous surveillance everywhere. We are talking about surveillance in public places and DNA checking from collected samples to a centrally held database. Privacy in people homes is still guaranteed except when a warrant has been issued - in that respect nothing has changed.
The proposed systems are nothing more then a tool to help solve crimes - they do not watch your every move in the privacy of your own home as the parents link would suggest. I really do not understand why this one subject raises so many hackles.
The best point in the article is the Cardinal Richelieu point - but even then I don't believe it. Thats why we have trial by Jury and an appeal system. Besides, there have miscarriages of justice ever since there was a justice system - why would a new tool increase that?
"Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." Watch someone long enough, and you'll find something to arrest -- or just blackmail -- with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies -- whoever they happen to be at the time."
Actually there is a lot of sense to that. It has been proposed before that a government DNA database would virtually solve crime - obviously this is not true but it would be a very useful tool for detection and prevention.
n g-science/dna-database/
p orts/NationalDNADatabase.pdf
/. readers (yes thats a sweeping generalization) but it really is what I think.
But before you go off on one and start ranting lets look at the facts...
From the Home Office: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/science-research/usi
"Any intrusion on personal privacy is proportionate to the benefits that are gained.
By the end of 2005, about 200,000 samples had been retained that would have been destroyed before the 2001 change in legislation. 8,000 of these samples matched with DNA taken from crime scenes, involving nearly 14,000 offences, including murders and rapes.
In 2005-06 45,000 crimes were matched against records on the DNA Database; including 422 homicides (murders and manslaughters) and 645 rapes."
Thats 45 thousand crimes in one year. Think about that for a while.
And an anti database view: http://www.genewatch.org/HumanGen/Publications/Re
"Errors and false DNA matches have led to miscarriages of justice, and these can create major difficulties for those wrongfully convicted because, like fingerprint evidence, DNA is widely regarded as absolutely conclusive, meaning that those without strong alibi evidence will tend to be presumed guilty. At the moment the DNA database itself can be viewed largely (but not entirely) as a growing suspect list that is mainly used to check samples from new and unsolved crime, but the existing data can be (and has been) used for broader purposes, and the UK practice of retaining the sample as well as the data allows it to be used for further testing for other purposes as the science develops.
We're seeing glimpses of what is possible with familial testing, which establishes links to family members where the suspect's DNA might not be on the database, and although the first instance of this was viewed as a coup, if used widely the procedure would find relatives you didn't know about, and reveal that people weren't related to the people they thought they were. So what have you got to hide? You don't know, and maybe you don't want to know."
--- I am *not* parroting a government line. Nor am I proposing GATACCA. I am simply stating that to dismiss this without thought on quaint and paranoid lines seems irrational and foolish. I realized that this viewpoint would run counter to many of the
Rubbish.
The fact you purchased a gift for your mother would hardly be picked up by automatic number plates would it? It would be picked up by a check on your credit card history, but then police have been able to do that for years. The fact is that they only do that if they have suspicion on the their part of a misdemeaner on your part. And that is how the system works - when there is suspicion then the police data mine the CCTV, card, number plates, phone records, DNA and other databases to generate, support or disprove a hypothesis about the crime itself.
To imply that the police will be watching you smacks of conspiracy theory and paranoia - go put your tinfoil coated aardvark hat back on you wierdo.
There will alway be specific isolated incidents of abuse to the system - that is inherent in a blanket coverage system controlled by fallible being subject to the whims of human nature - but the simple fact is that the system works on a more general system. And it definitely solves and discourages crime. In that respect I am all for it and I will continue to deride the nutters who think that the government is watching their every move.
I find that most people who reject number plate tracking, CCTV cameras, automatic logging and vehicle license MOT test (legal UK vehicle check to ensure it is road worthy) and the like generally have something to hide.
i sion#Crime_registration
Whilst I agree there must be safeguards, it seems that every day there are crimes solved, prevented or swiftly responded to by this kind of technology.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-circuit_telev
from the FA above:
"Claims that they reduce or deter crime have not been clearly borne out by independent studies[2], though the government claims that when properly used they do result in deterrence, rather than displacement. One clear effect that has been noted is a reduction of car crime when used in car parks. Cameras have also been installed in taxis to deter violence against drivers, and also in mobile police surveillance vans. In some cases CCTV cameras have become a target of attacks themselves. Middlesbrough council have recently installed "Talking CCTV" cameras in their busy town-centre. It is a system pioneered in Wiltshire which allows CCTV operators to communicate directly with the offenders they spot. This idea is first known to have appeared in George Orwell's famous novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
The use of CCTV in the United States is less common, though increasing, and generally meets stronger opposition. In 1998 3,000 CCTV systems were found in New York City. There are 2,200 CCTV systems in Chicago.
The most measurable effect of CCTV is not on crime prevention, but on detection and prosecution. Several notable murder cases have been solved with the use of CCTV evidence, notably the Jamie Bulger case, and catching David Copeland, the Soho nail bomber. The use of CCTV to track the movements of missing children is now routine.
After the bombings of London on 7 July 2005, CCTV footage was used to identify the bombers. The media was surprised that few tube trains actually had CCTV cameras, and there were some calls for this to be increased.
On July 22, 2005, Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead by police at Stockwell tube station. CCTV footage has debunked some police claims. Because of the follow-up bombing attempts the previous day, some of the tapes had been supposedly removed from CCTV cameras for study, and they were not functional. The use of DVR technology may solve this problem."
In the UK the police are building up a large DNA database from everybody charged with a criminal offence (now nearly 5m entries) this solves crimes regularly. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3232744.stm as an example.
Bottom line, I have no problem with this technology if safeguards are in place and it makes the streets a safer place to walk.
Exactly. SCO were cannon fodder for MS, nothing more.
Much the same as Novell and Linspire look to be setting themselves up to be...
...can Microsoft buy Novell?
I mean like 'em or hate 'em thats one firm with awfully deep pockets and the ownership seems to be settled now. Please, please tell me that I have missed something and I am being naive.
I've lost count... is this report now politically acceptable to the Bush administration or not?
What's their current line?
I spent alot of time in China working in the CE industry and this does not suprise me at all. The local culture is that to copy and improve is natural and not illegal.
:"In 2006, NEC, one of the 25 biggest consumer-electronics firms in the world, went public with the results of a two-year investigation. The company had been receiving complants about products it didn't even make: DVD players, cellphones, MP3 players. Investigators from International Risk, a private security firm employed by NEC, ultimately uncovered a shadow version of the company operating out of corporate offices in China, with ties to more than 50 manufacturing facilities. "On the surface, it looked like a series of intellectual-property infringements, but in reality a highly organized group has attempted to hijack the entire brand," says Steve Vickers, the former Hong Kong police inspector who was in charge of the investigation for International Risk. Executives had their own NEC business cards and e-mail add-resses. They had marketing plans and distribution networks in place. Some "company" facilities even had electronic signs bearing huge, lighted NEC logos. Most bold of all, the bogus NEC actually charged the manufacturers it worked with royalties on its designs. The investigation led to raids last year on 18 of the manufacturing sites and the seizure of nearly 50,000 fake products. Yet the factories themselves are still operating, just not using the NEC name. The ringleaders of the scam have yet to be caught; like the Samsung copiers, they are thought to still be making fakes."
9 767.stm
s eize-entire-brand/2006/05/29/1148754904830.html
d s/
However that had not stopped Chinese firms using our own IP systems against us by patenting just about everything they can get their hands on and then seeking money via the courts.
In a very real sense, they are having their cake and eating it as well.
My favorite story was the fake NEC firm and thats also mentioned in TFA
I suspect the biggest problem was trying to persuade them that they had been breaking the law in the first place.
For more information on Chinese patents see..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/693
For more information on the fake NEC firm, see
http://www.smh.com.au/news/biztech/slick-pirates-
To see some fake chinese brands..
http://www.hemmy.net/2007/04/29/chinese-fake-bran
Not very. Electric cars are about 4 times more efficient and you can power them easily from many sources : wind, solar, mains, water wheel/turbine.
Allow me the shamelessy crib some info from wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_vehicle
Political considerations
Most all of today's hydrogen is produced using fossil energy resources.[20] While some advocate hydrogen produced from non-fossil resources, there could be public resistance or technological barriers to the implementation of such methods. For example, the United States Department of Energy currently supports research and development aimed at producing hydrogen utilizing heat from generation IV reactors. Such nuclear power plants could be configured to cogenerate hydrogen and electricity. Hydrogen produced in this fashion would still incur the costs associated with transportation and compression or liquefaction assuming direct (molecular) hydrogen is the on-board fuel. Recently, alternative methods of creating hydrogen directly from sunlight and water through a metallic catalyst have been announced. This may eventually provide an economical, direct conversion of solar energy into hydrogen, a very clean solution for hydrogen production.
Some in Washington advocate schemes[22] other than hydrogen vehicles to replace the petroleum-based internal combustion engine vehicles. Plug-in hydrids, for example, would augment today's hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles with greater battery capacity to enable increased use of the vehicle's electric traction motor and reduced reliance on the combustion engine. The batteries would be charged via the electric grid when the vehicle is parked. Electric power transmission is about 95 percent efficient and the infrastructure is already in place (though substantial grid expansion would be needed if a sizeable fleet of plug-in hybrids were to be deployed.) Tackling the current drawbacks of electric cars or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles is believed by some to be easier than developing a whole new hydrogen infrastructure that mimics the obsolete model of oil distribution. Thermodynamically, a plug-in hybrid transportation system would face the same thermodynamic hurdles as would a system of hydrogen vehicles relying on electrolysis for its molecular hydrogen. The current electric grid, which is dominated by fossil energy resources in the United States, has a fuel-to-power efficiency of roughly 40 percent. Both the plug-in hybrids and the electrolytic hydrogen system would be subject to these comparative inefficiencies.
Hydrogen infrastructure
In order to distribute hydrogen to cars, the current gasoline fueling system would need to be replaced, or at least significantly supplemented with hydrogen fuel stations. Hydrogen stations are being built in various places around the world. Private and state initiatives like California's "California Hydrogen Highway" are already starting the infrastructure transition in advance of any manufacturers mass producing hydrogen cars. Replacement of the existing extensive gasoline fuel station infrastructure would cost a half trillion U.S. dollars in the United States alone.
note: this is the EV1 argument from "who killed the electric car". Because a hydrogen cell powered vehicle would mandate an engine with many replaceable parts and a company owned refueling infrastructure it would allow control and money making for the large oil corporations who killed the electric car mandate and promote hydrogen vehicles. It is simply not in their best interests to allow the consumers to get vehicles with a low maintenance cost and which they can refuel from multiple sources which make the companies little or no money.
Hydrogen production cost
Molecular hydrogen can be derived chemically from a feed stock such as methanol but can also be produced from water. Current technologies utilize between 25 to 50 percent of the higher heating value to produce
let me be the first to say "Good afternoon, Mr. Yakamoto,".
t -and-mini-cooper/
http://curtismorley.com/2007/02/06/minority-repor
Personalized advertising just jumped out of the cookie jar (no, get your mind off the choc chips lardy, I'm talking browsers here) and into the real world. Somehow the idea of large corporations tracking me makes me feel a great unease, we can trust them to value money over common decency and politeness.